You have brought me Vaikuntha!
Jadurani Dasi : The picture he gave me to paint from was very old, as you can imagine, since it was a picture of his Guru Maharaj. The details weren't clear, so in my painting I didn't paint fingernails. He brought that to my attention, and I said, "Well, I didn't see them." He said, "All right," as if I had said something intelligent. He was tolerant and patient with my lack of any kind of consciousness, what to speak of Krishna consciousness. Everybody knows what fingernails look like, and I realized that I should paint them in.
I painted white tilak, because the picture was black-and-white and our tilak was also white because there was no gopi chandana at that time. We used Fuller's Earth, which one of the devotees bought at a hardware store. Prabhupada told me to make the tilak yellowish and also to make a bright garland. He told me not to put a halo around his Guru Maharaj (perhaps I had already put one).
Then on a narrow, long piece of paper, which subsequently he did for many paintings after that, he wrote the mantra of that particular painting, in this case, his Guru Maharaj's pranam mantra, and he told me to write that at the bottom of the painting. When it was complete he made a big announcement. There were about ten devotees in the room, and he said, "You have brought me Vaikuntha." Although he had brought us Vaikuntha, he said that.
Reference: Memories-Anecdotes of a Modern-Day Saint by Siddhanta Dasa
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