Ananta Rupini dasi part 2

[Guest guest]

The departure of Ananta Rupini devi dasi (part 2)

 

Gaurangi dasi

 

 

Devoted to the very core of her being

 

" These days we talk a lot about love, but true love, the gift of oneself,

is something very rare; it is like a diamond, very hard to find. I will thus

focus on this particular quality of my wife, the fact that she forgot

herself completely in order to give everything to God.", says

Nitai Gaurasundara. Ananta Rupini was a genuine devotee, " a pot of nectar

", according to many devotees. She was always absorbed in hearing and

chanting the pastimes of the Lord, wherever she went. One time she was

invited with her husband to the house of a friend and she delighted his

mother by telling stories of Lord Nrsimhadeva and Haridas Thakura after

dinner. The sankirtan girls liked to go out with her because she was always

talking to them about Lord Caitanya and Lord Nityananda or reading the

Caitanya Caritamrita with them. She was even reading while taking prasadam,

which could take her hours; up to the last day of her life, she had a

Srimad-bhagavatam open at her bedside while sleeping.

 

She also liked to talk about Srila Prabhupada and the devotees, speaking of

their achievements and qualities. Mr Sukwal, president of " Friends of

India International " invited her every year as the official brahmana, along

with her husband, at the ceremony in memory of his departed mother. One time

he made a statement reeling of impersonalism, "I am Madhusudanan " , to

which she had sharply replied, " Just shut up ! ". Mr. Sukwal was happy to

share this incident in which he had been boldy put back in his true

position, an insignificant servant of the Supreme Lord.

 

Not always understood

 

When she was alive, Ananta Rupini was not always properly understood or

appreciated. Her exclusive absorption in the Lord's desires sometimes

caused her to act in extreme ways, to the detriment of her own mental

well-being and of devotees around her. At times she had difficulties to

sufficiently appreciate sincere devotees who showed imperfections linked to

their human nature and conditioning, or who strayed from the highest

devotional standard. Satarupa dasi, the psychotherapist whom Ananta Rupini

had consulted for two years, witnessed some of her rigid attitudes; all

she could say without a doubt was that Ananta Rupini was a person who was

very hungry and thirsty for love. She had found this sublime love in Krishna

and her spiritual master, and she had sacrificed everything for Them, which

made it hard for her to relate to those who had not attained that

unconditional stage.

 

When Bhagavan das left the French yatra, everything quickly deteriorated.

The two temples got almost empty overnight, books were piling up and rotting

in the storehouses, with nobody to go out and distribute them. The movement

of sankirtan, which had been so vigorous before, lost its momentum, "its

vital breath", and she lost hers at the same time. It is at this very time

that she started to get sick. One of her godsisters had diagnosed her

disease as "the ISKCON disease": Ananta Rupini just could not tolerate to

see the movement of sankirtan in such a pitiful state. What affected her

the most was the lies and the vicious attacks of the anti-cult groups and

the medias. I had that experience myself while I worked in the communication

team; after reading too much of their garbage, I felt myself becoming a

little paranoid, so I stopped reading their obnoxious literature. Ananta

Rupini was very shaken by this flood of slander and wickedness, and she

started to think that there was a conspiracy to stop the merciful movement

of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, which led her to become very suspicious and see

spies everywhere, even among devotees and congregational members.

 

 

Unlimited services on sankirtan

 

Ananta Rupini was the feminine Don Quichotte of the French sankirtan party,

always enthusiastic and very positive, always fighting against all obstacles

to distribute Srila Prabhupada's books and preach to her last breath. She

was always telling the devotees the same thing, "Come on, go for it!

Sankirtan is so wonderful! By Lord Nityananda's mercy, it is pure bliss! You

will feel so much better afterwards. We have to save the conditioned souls!

we have to give them the mercy ! "

 

>From the very beginning she understood that sankirtan meant preaching heart

to heart to people, and not always distributing hundreds of books or collect

huge amounts of laksmi. During the seventies, at the beginning of her

involvement in Krishna Consciousness, she was practically the only girl in

the sankirtan party to have a hard time to make her daily quota.

Very often the sankirtan girls would find her talking with people at a

sidewalk café, sometimes for hours, maybe making new bhaktas, or at least

deeply touching someone in distress or in search for the meaning of life.

Ananta Rupini had given herself another kind of quota, a quota of hearts to

touch and change, for which she was sometimes bullied and reprimanded.

Another reason she could rarely do her quota was because she had to spend

lots of time driving the sankirtan van, as she was the only one with a

driving license. At that time the vans were long vehicles, very hard to

drive and manoeuver, C35 or Mercedes vans. In order to see the road she had

to put many cushions under her. Distributing books and driving the van was

very demanding on her body and mind, but she never complained. In order to

stay fit till the end of the day, she had to take rest a few times,

sometimes in the most amazing places, under the rain in the middle of Paris.

 

The sankirtan girls had many comical adventures with these monstrous vans.

Once they were going in the wrong direction of a one way street; the

policemen stopped them and asked to see their papers. When they saw all

these young girls piled up in this van, they started to wonder what was

going on there, and they started to ask various questions. They became even

more curious when inside they saw a huge box chained to the van. It was the

box containing their papers and the laksmi. The devotees were starting to

worry because that day they had their collection plus the one of the other

sankirtan parties. On top of it, they had lost the key of the lock on the

chain, and they were not inclined at all to look for it in the middle of

this van, crowded with books, bags of bhoga and their personal stuff.

Ananta Rupini was starting to panic a little, but Dhara saved the situation

by staying cool and explaining the situation to the policemen. She even

suggested that they use their gun to break the lock open. Ananta Rupini

was simply praying to Lord Nrsimhadeva to rescue them. Happily the policemen

said that they were not allowed to use their gun for that, and they let the

girls go, never to discover what was in that mysterious box. Nonetheless

Ananta Rupini was all in sweat after this encounter with the police.

 

Her last Christmas marathon

 

During the month of December 2004 she did her last Christmas marathon with

her husband. They had rented a small room in Paris at an Indian friend's.

Nitai Gaurasundara was going door to door to distribute books in the

suburbs. Ananta Rupini went out only occasionally, and because of her bad

health, she had found a new way to distribute books. She would call all the

natural food stores and tried to sell them the Hare Krishna cookbooks, and

sometimes a few other boks. One day she sold thirty books to the director

of a chain of biological food stores. Not only did he buy cookbooks for his

stores, he also took all the philosophy books she had, the Bhagavad-gita,

the Krishna books, etc. He was very eager to know more about Krishna

Consciousness and even bought a japa mala. Ananta Rupini was in bliss from

beginning to end during her last marathon. She ended up 11th on the list of

disciples of Prabhupada worldwide.

 

 

Her many other services

 

As her name indicates, her services were ananta, varied and unlimited. She

was also the bhakta leader and trained the new comers. Many appreciated her

motherly attitude, the time she was taking to talk to them, explain the

philosophy, answer their questions, erase their doubts, encourage them or

offer them solace. Some thought she was a little too tough and

authoritarian, but a training is a training; years later many are grateful

to have received that kind of training from her, even if at the time they

were a little reluctant to take it. One of the services she performed was

hardly noticed, but it took a lot of her time and energy: it was to find a

new temple in Paris for the deities of Sri Sri Radha Parisisvara, Nitai

Sacisuta, Jagannath, Baladeva and Subhadra. For almost six years she went

through all the ads in the newspapers. Even during her last trip to India,

at a time when there was a new team to take care of that, she still took

with her a bundle of papers with the same intention, to look for a decent

temple for Their Lordships to replace the ridiculously small and inadequate

one in Noisy-le-Grand, in the suburbs of Paris.

 

For many years, with her husband, she was also working very hard at the

publication of the French sankirtan newsletter, "Sankirtan Katha", and the

magazine " Bhakti ". When people did not show any interest for the Vaisnava

philosophy, she was convinced that only prasadam could make a change in

their consciousness. She was always very fond of distributing prasadam to

the devotees, her friends and all those she met. She was very expert at

making ladus and gave them on sankirtan to all those who took books. When

there was a festival, she was happy to cook a fancy preparation for the

murtis. She was also a very good musician and had learned music and

harmonium simply by listening. During classes she was making very beautiful

pearl jewelry for the deities. Her last project was to gather the disciples

of Srila Prabhupada in Paris in Satarupa's apartment. She was planning to do

it again, but quit her body before.

 

Stoïc during her long disease

 

Ananta Rupini was sick for almost twenty years, with some breaks of course ;

but despite her bad health she always remained absorbed in devotional

service. Even when she was very emaciated, with hardly any flesh left on her

bones, she never lamented or indulged in self-pity; on the contrary, she was

thinking on how to help others. She was very much against western medicine

and when she heard that some friend or acquaintance was sick, she was

giving them advice based on traditional or ayurvedic medicine, sometimes

copying a few pages of these health books and mailing them to these sick

persons.

 

In January 2003, she was brought to the St André hospital in Bordeaux in the

aisle for terminal patients. Unlike the other patients of this 'house of

death', Ananta was beaming, active and always ready to render service

instead of being served. She was telling fascinating

pastimes of Krishna to a devotee nurse who had come to assist her during the

absence of her husband; she was also preaching to the hospital priest. All

the doctors and nurses were very impressed by the wisdom and the deep

spirituality that was emanating from her room, which she had transformed

into a temple, with the presence of Tulasi Maharani in a small pot.

Each time that members of the hospital crew came to see her, they were

greeted by the song of tulasi playing on the tape recorder; Ananta Rupini

would then speak to them about this very sacred plant, and of course about

Krishna. She had found ways to illuminate this place of death.

 

Epilogue

 

Nitai Gaurasundara das: " I can tell you how the disappearance of a

Vaisnava completely dedicated to the Supreme Personality of Godhead is

illusory because I can feel her presence very strongly since she has gone.

She has chanted the holy names very much, and this will remain very deep in

my heart and my soul."

 

Dhara dasi : " Ananta Rupini, you were made for a very soft and sweet

spiritual life, but this tough and difficult world has somewhat shaken your

fragility. Krishna could not tolerate your suffering, and that's why you

were called back to Him. Dear Ananta; we still need your benedictions.

Please remember that we are still on this earth planet and that we still

need a lot of protection from those who are close to the Lord. Please

intervene so that one day we also will be able to return to the spiritual

world."

 

Shyamasakta dasi : "Thank you, Srila Prabhupada. One more time, at the

occasion of the departure of one of your disciples, we can see the matchless

gifts you have give us. You do keep your transcendental promises. The life

of Ananta Rupini was a sacrifice -she acted in relation to the sacred ,

Krishna. Her departure to the spiritual world is guaranteed as she was

pronouncing the holy names of Krishna. Something tells me that Lord Caitanya

was near her at that time."

 

Sundar Gopal das : " There is now on this earth one less great soul who was

engaged in preaching. I simply hope that we can try to continue in her

footsteps; that is certainly what will be able to please her the most."

 

Excerpt from " Damodar ", a poem written by Madhavendra Puri das, Mandakini

dasi's husband (Ananta Rupini meditated a lot on that poem before quitting

her body)

 

"No one in this material world can boast

To have any hold on the Unlimited Being

Except for His bhaktas , ready to suffer

Many difficulties for His pleasure."