Srila Prabhupada and Srinathji family
Sri Nathji : Prabhupada came to my parents' home. I was surprised when my mother phoned me at the office and said, "Don't forget to come a little early for lunch." I said, "Why should I come early?" She said, "We're having a very important guest." I said, "Fine." My father and I came home at about 12:30 p.m., and when we entered, devotees were singing the maha-mantra and dancing.
At that time I was a disciple of a famous Mayavadi, Chinmayananda Swami, who was anti-Prabhupada. So I was shocked to see these Westerners, dressed with dhotis, saris, and tilak, singing and dancing and behaving as if they owned my house.
And they were all over the place. My mother loved it, and my elderly father, who held a senior position in the government as a Member of Parliament, appreciated what Prabhupada was doing. After the kirtan the devotees sat in the library room. The first thing Prabhupada said to my father was, "My disciples are getting a bad name in India. They are getting investigated to see if they are CIA agents." This was in 1971, and the devotees were being harassed. They were not getting visas and were sometimes deported or arrested.
Prabhupada said, "My disciples get up early in the morning, chant their rounds, attend mangal arati and classes. They do so much service for Krishna. Why don't you go to Parliament and get that investigation stopped? Allow all my disciples to have long-term visas." My father said, "Let me see what I can do."
Prabhupada was getting my family into devotional service. The next thing he said was, "You see this young man here" and everybody turned to the young man, about nineteen years old "he was originally an associate of Lord Chaitanya." I was looking very carefully at Prabhupada, examining him. And in my heart I thought, "This is a con man. This guy really knows how to speak." Then Prabhupada said a very strange thing. He asked my father, "Do you think you can adopt this young man and make him an Indian citizen?" My heart sank. That young man was Jayapataka Swami. My father said, "Let me see what I can do."
During the course of the next few months, Prabhupada made my father a Life Member. I believe he was the thirty-second Life Member in ISKCON. Today of course, there are more than twenty-five or thirty thousand Life Members in India alone. Prabhupada gave my father his personal books. He gave him his own Bhagavad-gita, which he had always kept with him, his personal copies of the Krishna books, Teachings of Lord Chaitanya, and The Nectar of Devotion. My father gave a lot of money to Prabhupada. I thought, "Prabhupada makes my father work and takes away his money." So I told my father that we needed to talk a little bit. I was about thirty-one years old, and my father was close to sixty years old. I asked him, "What are you doing? This man comes in our house, and he virtually asks you to do everything for him."
My father said, "He's doing a very important duty. He is like a Vedic ambassador. He's spreading Indian culture, and nobody's done this before. I appreciate it. I am going to help him." Prabhupada captured the hearts of my parents. It was just the reverse of what I hear happens in the West. There Prabhupada captured the hearts of the young men and women, and their parents complain. My case was the opposite. I was complaining about the relationship Prabhupada had built with my parents.
Reference: Memories Anecdotes of a Modern Day Saint - Volume 2 by Siddhanta Dasa
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