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Ah, this is chapati

Sravanananda Dasa: Prabhupada came to Madras temple. We had a little center in Kilpauk, Aspiran Gardens - just a house in a very good neighborhood. We had a temple room, small temple room for guests to come, have some kirtanas and I don't know if we had Deities. I think we had just photos and Prabhupada wanted to have lunch at the temple. When he came and looked at our building, he saw the drumsticks hanging from the trees - which Prabhupada liked very much - and curry leaves everywhere. Then Prabhupada said, "Do you know how to cook all of this?" And I did, but I didn't want to, because again I didn't want to cook badly. I wasn't used to cooking for Srila Prabhupada, so I asked Harikesa, and he said he would cook because he had cooked for Prabhupada before. You know, I didn't want to make mistakes.

So he cooked in the kitchen, it was down the hallway and I might have been 20 feet or more - 30, 25 feet. While he was cooking, I was serving Srila Prabhupada, who was sitting on a simple mat or cushion with a little, small table. When I put all the prasadam there… Harikesa was making chapatis, so I would bring a chapati to Prabhupada and I would, just kind of walk down the hallway and it would get to Prabhupada, it became flat, it wasn't puffed, it wasn't super-hot. Prabhupada would touch it and say, "This is not chapati. Chapati is hot." So I said, "Okay, Srila Prabhupada." I ran back to Harikesa, "Srila Prabhupada said it's not hot."

So Harikesh would take the chapati, put it on the flames, puff it up like the way chapati should be, or I think a pulka, and I would try to get it to Prabhupada. Every time I would get it to Prabhupada, it would start to sink down, shrink, and it wasn't puffed up. Prabhupada would tap it, "This is not chapati. Chapati means hot." So I ran back to Harikesa and I said, "He wants this chapati to be super-hot." So he puffed it up, threw it on my plate, I slid and ran to Prabhupada and placed it on his plate. It was puffed up, Prabhupada touched it, the steam came out, he says, "Ah, that is chapati." So Prabhupada taught me about chapatis. Until this day that's how I like chapatis.



Reference: SPF Interviews