Prabhupada's only direct word to Aindra dāsa

by Nitya-Siddha Mahā-Bhāgavat Śrīla Aindra Dāsa Paramahaṁsa

Prabhupāda came out to go from his quarters, which were up on the hill, down to the temple for greeting the Deities in the morning. There was supposed to be some kind of a kīrtan to usher him down to the temple. Somehow or other, I had a mṛdaṅga in my hands—and I'm not a mṛdaṅga player either, really. I remember when I first joined, I would play this "bing bing bong bong, bing bing flap flap." That was the first mṛdaṅga beat that I knew. And then there was "bing bing bong, bing bing bong," you know, like that. A simple beat.

So I was playing one of those beats, and they had me leading the kīrtan. I was just chanting the simple Hare Krishna mantra, walking right next to Śrīla Prabhupāda. As I was chanting away at the top of my lungs, trying to do the best I could, Śrīla Prabhupāda just turned to me with a smile and kind of cocked his head back a little bit, looking at me with approval.

And he said, "Jaya."

It's the only word Prabhupāda ever directly said to me, yet that one "jaya" stuck with me. It was a "jaya" not just to me, but it was a "jaya" in relationship to my endeavor to do saṅkīrtan—to sing the holy name, Hare Krishna, for the rest of my life.