SRILA PRABHUPADA AND THE PERFECTION OF WALKING
Gaurangi dasi
Srila Prabhupada's daily morning walks are well-known to all his followers. Almost every day since the end of the sixties, no matter in which country he was or the weather conditions, he would go on a morning walk with a group of disciples for about one hour, and, as if by magic, return just in time for the greeting of the deities. Srila Prabhupada once stated that with these regular walks, he increased his lifespan by ten years. All doctors will tell you that walking is one of the best exercises, if it's done at a good pace. Even though Prabhupada was in his seventies, he walked so briskly that his young disciples, all in their twenties, could barely keep up with him. One Prabhupada disciple told me recently how this habit began: while Prabhupada got sick in New York and was taken to the hospital, one doctor commented that it would be good for this old man to go on walks instead of praying all day long. Prabhupada took the comment to heart and started to walk regularly. In big cities, he walked in the streets and in the beautiful parks: Brooklyn Park in New York, Beverly Hills Park in Los Angeles, Golden Gate park in San Francisco, etc., or on the beaches, as Juhu Beach in Bombay . Of course, the walks were spiced with Krishna-katha and conversations with his disciples and guests. When the weather was too bad, Prabhupada would just take his walk inside, as in " St Hellish ", the new name he gave to St Moritz, a prestigious ski resort in the swiss Alps because of the bitter cold pervading it. During the few days Prabhupada
stayed there, he took his walk in the hotel lobby, while hisservant kept switching the lights on; and when his servant left to go prepare lunch, Prabhupada did it himself, intent on keeping his daily routine.
Srila Prabhupada's habit of walking started during his childhood, when he was living in Calcutta. Sometimes, enjoying each others company, father and son used to walk as far as ten miles, to save the five-paisa tram fare to go home. Later on in Delhi, Srila Prabhupada did not hesitate to walk in heat
and cold to push on the mission of the Lord and get his Back to Godhead magazines printed. Considering that he published 28 English issues of BTG between 1944 and 1960, besides a few in Hindi also, we can thus imagine the amount of walking he did in the smoky, noisy and overcrowded streets of Delhi. In his book, "A Lifetime in Preparation", Satsvarupa Maharaja
described Prabhupada's endeavours: In February of 1956, as Abhay was trying to print Back to Godhead in New Delhi, he walked through the early-morning streets in winter 's discomfort
to go read the latest proofs at the printer's, Surendra Kular Jain.
Prabhupada was then very poor, and by walking he saved a few paisas. Only when he was delivering paper from the paper dealer to the printer would he rent a rickshaw. He had no cadar, only a lightweight cotton jacket, and he wore rubber shoes. He also wore a cotton hat that covered his ears and tied beneath his chin, protecting him from the fourty-degree (må være Fahrenheit?) wintry mornings and the sometimes gusty winds. After picking up the copies from the printer, Abhay would play the role of a newspaper salesman, on behalf of his spiritual master and the previous acaryas. He walked all around Delhi to
sell his Back to Godhead magazines for six paisas each; sometimes he would take a seat at a tea stand and ask the persons sitting close to him to take a copy. Abhay also walked to the homes or offices of people who had already donated or had agreed to see him. In the summer of 1956, the 110-degree heat (må være Fahrenheit??) made it almost intolerable to spend time outdoors, as hot, dust-laden winds blew in the city streets. But Abhay ignored the heat and the ordinary limitations of the body. One day while delivering Back to Godhead to various addresses in the city, Abhay suddenly began reeling, half unconscious, overcome by the heat. At that very moment, an acquaintance of his, a man he had approached during his preaching, happened to be passing by in his car, and he took Abhay to a doctor. The doctor diagnosed him as a victim of
heatstroke and ordered him to rest.
In the early sixties, when Prabhupada compounded the publication of BTG with the printing of the first canto of Srimad-bhagavatam, he worked - and walked -
even more. At the end of 1962, he usually made a daily walk from his residence at Chippiwada to OK Press to bring the corrected proofs. He had to walk through the busy paper district at Chawri Bazaar. Everywhere there were carts and rickshaws carrying paper. Pedestrian traffic was so hectic that for a person to dally even for a moment would cause a disruption. Abhay
thus walked to OK Press for the four months of the printing, and another month to the bindery. Once his first volume of Bhagavatam was printed, Bhaktivedanta Swami again walked to the major libraries, universities and schools of Delhi to try to place some copies. Institutional sales were brisk at the beginning,but then Srila Prabhupada had to spend hours just to sell a few copies. As the first and only sankirtan devotee, all the burden and the pressure was on him to go out and sell as many copies of the first volume as possible, to finance the printing of the second part.
In 1953, Abhay Caran organized the League of Devotees in Jhansi, a large city (two million today) in the southern part of Uttar Pradesh, about 415 kms south of Delhi.
