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THE SCIENCE OF SELF-REALIZATION
raw fascination, I knew I wanted to follow his progress every step of the way. His plans for expansion were daring and unpredictable—except for the fact that they always seemed to succeed gloriously. He was seventyish and a stranger to America, and he had arrived with practically nothing, yet now, within a few months, he had singlehandedly started a  movement ! It was mind-boggling.
One August morning at the Second Avenue storefront temple, Śrīla Prabhupāda told us, “Today is Lord Kṛṣṇa’s appearance day.” We would observe a twenty-four-hour fast and stay inside the temple. That evening some visitors from India happened along. One of them—practically in tears—described his unbounded rapture at finding this little piece of authentic India on the other side of the world. Never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined such a thing. He offered Śrīla Prabhupāda eloquent praise and deep thanks, left a donation, and bowed at his feet. Everyone was deeply moved. Later, Śrīla Prabhupāda conversed with the gentleman in Hindi, and since what he was saying was unintelligible to me, I was able to observe how his every expression and gesture communicated to the very core of the human soul.
Later that year, while in San Francisco, I sent Śrīla Prabhupāda his first airline ticket, and he flew out from New York. A sizeable group of us greeted him at the terminal by chanting the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra. Then we drove him to the eastern edge of Golden Gate Park, to a newly rented apartment and storefront temple—an arrangement very similar to that in New York. We had established a pattern. Śrīla Prabhupāda was ecstatic.
A few weeks later the first  mṛdaniga  (a long clay drum with a playing head on each end) arrived in San Francisco from India. When I went up to Śrīla Prabhupāda’s apartment and informed him, his eyes opened wide, and in an excited voice he told me to go down quickly and open the crate. I took the elevator, got out on the ground floor, and was walking toward the front door when Śrīla Prabhupāda appeared. So eager was he to see the  mṛdaniga  that he had taken the stairway and had beaten the elevator. He asked us to open the crate, he tore off a piece of the saffron cloth he was wearing, and, leaving only the playing heads exposed, he wrapped the drum with the cloth. Then he said, “This must never come off,” and he began giving detailed instructions on how to play and care for the instrument.
Also in San Francisco, in 1967, Śrīla Prabhupāda inaugurated Rathayātrā, the Festival of the Chariots, one of several festivals that, thanks to him, people all over the world now observe. Rathayātrā has taken place in India’s Jagannātha Purī each year for two thousand years, and by 1975