Dearest Guru Maharaja,
Please accept my respectful obeisances at your lotus feet. All glories to your unbreakable determination to serve Srila Prabhupada. All glories to Srila Prabhupada and his serious followers.
In the twenty-five years that I’ve been your disciple and in the years preceding that, there has never been a single moment where I have seen your determination to serve Srila Prabhupada falter. Srila Prabhupada said that Bhaktivinoda Thakura could have conquered the whole world with Krishna consciousness in eighteen days but he left it for us to get the credit. Likewise, there are some things that Srila Prabhupada did not manifest so that his followers can take credit.
I don’t know if there will ever be anyone like you, who has so explicitly and unambiguously demonstrated that even the most difficult, painful, complicated, mind-bending, physical difficulties cannot decrease or impede the incessant flow of service to Srila Prabhupada’s lotus feet. It is one thing to tolerate pain, yet a completely different thing not to be disturbed by pain but carry on with life blissfully. Logic is always dependent on experience. I don’t have the experience even remotely of handling physical difficulties like you. Nor have I seen or heard about others handling such situations in the manner that you do. As far as I am concerned, you defy logic.
I have seen you in some of the most excruciating physical situations. It is not just me, but also others who have seen you in those situations, who say the same thing. It is this: Just by being in your presence, one gets a gush of happiness, the unmistakable anandambudi vardhana experience because that is what you exude even in those situations. Again, how is this possible? It defies logic.
These experiences give me a glimpse that Krishna consciousness is not an armchair concept filled with lofty ideals and poetic words which do not have real life significance. Krishna consciousness is exactly as Prabhupada presented it. And through your sterling example, you have made us know it and realise it. For being such an example of love and teaching us and giving us Krishna consciousness as it is, it is not possible to repay our debt of gratitude to you, either realistically or unrealistically.
I remember the moment when we were shifting you from the Mission Hospital, Durgapur to ILBS Delhi in an air-ambulance. Most of the nurses who worked there were from Kerala and they spoke to me in native Malayalam. They were recounting to me how stressful it is for them generally to work in an ICU. But when you were in the ICU, they were looking forward to their ICU shift everyday. So they said it was a mixture of happiness and sadness that you were leaving: Happiness that you were going to a better facility and sadness that the ICU would be back to the stressful days in your absence. During your days there, I saw you interact with everyone, including the doctors. You preached to them and insisted to me that I should take their contact details in your contact book and follow up with them to inspire them to continue to chant which they had started by your instructions.
While in Delhi, as I was standing outside the ICU one evening, something unusual happened. A lady came to me asking to meet you in the ICU. Nobody knew her. She explained to me that she had seen you at a distance once in Mayapur and was so inspired that she started to follow you on Facebook. On the day that you were shifted from Durgapur to Delhi, we had actually arranged to shift you to Chennai. But due to a last minute hiccup with the air-ambulance schedule, we had to shift you to Delhi. We had posted on Facebook that we would be taking you to Chennai and the next post was that you had landed in Delhi. A lot of devotees were surprised, “How did that happen?” After reading the post that you would be going to Chennai, this lady told me that she began to pray to Krishna how nice it would be if you would come to Delhi instead and went to cook in the kitchen. After she came out, she was stunned to read that you had landed in Delhi. So she said that she knew that she had to go and meet you even if you were in the ICU. I asked her a few more questions and found that her account was genuine. So I told her that it must be her wish that changed the plan from Chennai to Delhi. Guru Maharaja, I was thinking that you had done all kinds of things which are hard to believe. This would be one more to that list: to meet with an eager first-time guest in the ICU. I wanted it to go down in history that from even inside an ICU, you conceded to give an appointment to someone. I told her to wait, quickly went in to see you and told you about her. Through your alphabet chart (because you were on a ventilator), you told me to bring her in. So it happened. Her name was Puja Jaggi.
A few days later, you attended the full GBC meetings over skype even while tubes were sticking into different parts of your body. Several of your fellow GBC members could not imagine how you could do it. I remember Romapada Maharaja saying, “He is in a league of his own".
As I’m writing this offering, there is a flood of memories and things that I want to say. But due to the prospect of this offering becoming too long, I would like to conclude with one memory.
You had instructed me that whenever you are in a very serious medical condition, I should be around. After reaching Delhi from Durgapur, when I came to see you in the ICU, I reminded you that I had come in fulfilment of your instruction. Independent of that, I always desired to be around you when you were in such a condition. To my astonishment, I saw you lift your head with all the tubes, raise your left hand, again with tubes, bring it to the region of your heart and bow your head in gratitude. I was speechless, choked with tears in my eyes. It is a moment that constantly resurfaces in my memory. I see your head going up in that hospital bed. I see your left hand going up and towards your chest and your head bow down. A very touching gesture from ordinary understanding. Yet, in that moment, I also see the visible termination of billions of years of my life in this material world.
Your insignificant servitor,
Acintya Caitanya dāsa