Remembering Srila Prabhupada - Japanese Landlady

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Srila Prabhupada NectarJapan

 

During a wintertime visit to Japan, Prabhupada stayed

in a cottage where the walls were made of paper. The

landlord supplied a kerosene heater, but it only

warmed a small area. Prabhupada wrapped himself in

his gray wool chadar and went on translating the

Bhagavatam through the cold early-morning hours, but

he remarked that it was very uncomfortable. When

devotees went to the landlord and asked for a second

heater, the landlord's wife objected. The landlord

finally found a spare second heater, but the kerosene

fumes made the room too stuffy. In addition, the

house was filled with a bad odour. In that

neighbourhood there was an open sewage system: a truck

was supposed to come by with a vacuum cleaner and suck

out the contents of the stool pits. But the truck

hadn't been there in over a week. In anxiety that

their spiritual master was suffering much

inconvenience, the devotees went to the landlord and

pleaded with him to do something about the stench.

The man was humble and accommodating, and he respected

Prabhupada as a spiritual leader. He agreed to clean

out the pits himself, using hand buckets. But the

landlord's wife again objected that her husband should

make such an extraordinary humiliating effort to

accommodate Srila Prabhupada. The man did it anyway,

and the bad odour disappeared.

On Prabhupada's last evening in the paper cottage, he

gave a public lecture. The house had one floor plus a

stagelike mezzanine. The speaker's dias was set on

this stage, along with a microphone. The little

dwelling was filled with guests, and Srila Prabhupada

led kirtana and then began lecturing in English, which

at least some of his audience could understand. But

in the middle of his talk, the landlord's wife, a

small, middle-aged Japanese lady, entered the house

and began screaming in anger. A few devotees moved

forward to stop her, but she evaded them. She walked

up onto the stage beside Srila Prabhupada, making

angry gestures and completely disrupting the meeting.

Prabhupada asked a guest who she was and what was the

matter with her, and he heard that the lady was the

landlady and that she was angry that Prabhupada made

her husband clean out the stool pits. When he

understood, Prabhupada broke into a grin. He leaned

forward and spoke into the microphone, as if making an

announcement. "Japanese landlady," he said, and the

audience and devotees relaxed and laughed. It was as

if, by two words, Prabhupada had made a philosophical

statement, explaining the universal phenomenon of

landladies and how they had to be tolerated. After a

pause, Prabhupada continued his lecture, and the

landlady who had become disarmed by Prabhupada's

smiling words, went down the stairs and left the

cottage.

- From the Nectar by HH Satsvarupa Dasa Goswami

 

Please Chant: Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna

Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare

Hare And Be Happy

 

 

 

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