Get out!

Ramesvara : Karandhar met me in 1970 at the Portland temple and decided that he wanted me to become his assistant to work for the book publishing. So in 1971 he brought me to New Dvaraka and he personally trained me throughout ‘71, ‘72 and ‘73. Then the unimaginable happened. Karandhar left at the end of 1973, which was a shock. Jayatirtha and I flew immediately to Hawaii to visit with Srila Prabhupada. At that time Prabhupada was asking us how would things go on, and the conclusion was that Karandhar’s jobs would be split. Jayatirtha would handle the zonal responsibilities and I would handle the BBT responsibilities. In 1974 I made an official BBT visit to our Brooklyn temple where ISKCON Press was located. I had been to the temple a number of times as a book distributor and as a preacher, but not in the capacity of a BBT manager. We were getting ready to reprint two books, The Teachings of Lord Chaitanya and the Krsna Book. One of the artists had been working for the better part of a year on line drawing sketches that would appear in every chapter of the Teachings of Lord Chaitanya. The other devotees had been regularly painting for the Srimad-Bhagavatam, and they had this idea to replace some old paintings with new ones in the reprint of the Krsna Book. The original paintings were done in 1968 and 1969 and the early ‘70s. The artists’ technique had gotten much better and they thought that the new paintings looked more realistic. So it was my task to fly back to Los Angeles and present all of this to Srila Prabhupada as my first official act as a BBT manager.

Prabhupada was in his room and we started off by showing him the drawings of the Teachings of Lord Chaitanya. One by one, Prabhupada was commenting and rejecting them for various reasons. Prabhupada liked the original drawings, as simple as they were that had been done by Govinda dasi and Gaurasundar. These drawings, while technically I think superior, lacked in so many ways according to Srila Prabhupada. In one drawing the Goswamis, Rupa and Sanatana, were absent. In another drawing one of the Goswamis was sitting on the same level as Lord Chaitanya. On and on, Prabhupada would tear apart these drawings, and as he kept going through them he was getting angry. I don’t know if any devotee had ever seen Srila Prabhupada angry before but I certainly had not. It was a shock and it was scary. I was frightened. The conclusion was we weren’t going to use any of those drawings.

Then I had to bring out the Krsna Book and show Prabhupada the paintings that the artists wanted to take out and the new ones that they wanted to insert. I introduced the topic and Prabhupada said, “They want to add paintings?” I said, “No, Srila Prabhupada, they want to replace paintings, not add. In some cases they are the same scene but they think they painted it better. In other cases they want to take out paintings that they think were painted too long ago and were not painted in a serious way and insert other paintings, not of the same lila.” Prabhupada said, “What? You have no authority to do that. You have no authority here. Once a painting has been approved, you can’t remove it. If you want to repaint that pastime and if the new painting is better, shows more detail, shows more lila, more character, then that might be considered. But just to take one painting out to put a different one in? No. You cannot do that.” He said, “Once I have approved something in my books, it is eternal. Once a painting is approved, it is eternal. You have no authority.” I said, “Oh, okay.” So I said, “Do you want me to show you what they are proposing?” Very unhappily he said, “Okay.” So I started to show Srila Prabhupada the paintings one by one that they wanted to insert. One of them was a painting of Krishna killing Putana. Now we had a painting of Krishna killing Putana, so this I think would have fit the category of taking an old one out and putting in a better one. Prabhupada looked at it and made a face. He said, “That is an ugly black mass. That is not superior. Rejected.” Next I showed Prabhupada a painting of Krishna sitting on the rocks that I thought was beautiful. Prabhupada thought His hair was too long and wild. “Rejected. And besides you want to take, you don’t want to add? You want to take out a painting that I have already approved for that? No. Rejected.” As I kept showing Srila Prabhupada these paintings, the anger that had started with the line drawings for TLC had grown to almost like roaring proportions. At one point he was pounding his fist on the desk, saying, “This is what I’m afraid of, that you will make changes in my books that will ruin them. No. You have to get permission. You cannot do this.” Finally I had one last painting to show Srila Prabhupada. I said, “Prabhupada, they want to take out the painting of the rasa-lila and insert this new painting of the rasa-lila that appeared in the Third Canto.” Prabhupada didn’t say a word for a moment. From his sitting room he could look into his bedroom where he saw this beautiful painting of the original rasa-lila, that Devahuti did, hanging on his wall. He was looking at that painting and he looked back at the print of the painting that we at the press wanted. He said, “You think this is better? This is a hippie dance. Their heads are not covered. Krishna’s hair is wild. The gopi’s hair is wild. Hippie seeds. Hippie dance. Rascals. They are all rascals.” Prabhupada was so angry that he was banging his fist and yelling at me. At that time his servant, Sudama, came running in because he heard the yelling. He couldn’t imagine what it was. He opened the door and saw Prabhupada like Lord Nrsimhadeva. He couldn’t even get down to offer his obeisances because he was so terrified. He stood trembling in the doorway and covered his eyes. He couldn’t bear to see the scene. Then Prabhupada said, “Get out!” And he threw us both out. It was the first of many lessons that Prabhupada gave me about making changes to his books.