 | Since Srila Prabhupada's stroke the previous year he always regularly took Ayurvedic medicine. He brought with him a supply of medicine when he returned from Vrindavana and then Acyutananda who was still in India would regularly send medicine to him as well as some particular nuts from India called parayalyche (?) These nuts had to be grounded to powder and they were as hard as bricks and they had to be mixed with his medicine. So Gaurasundara would sit regularly with mortar and pestle and grind these nuts into powder; then 3 mornings a week Gaurasundara would grind Srila Prabhupada's medicine along with the nuts. It consisted of all these little herbs and Prabhupada also mentioned there was gold in his medicine. It was a time consuming task - the grinding of these little brick-like nuts which Gaurasundara did regularly, and Srila Prabhupada often said this Ayurvedic medicine was helping him, and because Gaurasundara and I were taking care of Srila Prabhupada, giving him medicine, trying to take care of all his needs and running errands we naturally were a bit over-protective. Sometimes in my overprotective mood I would mother him a bit and he would say jokingly to me: "Physician heal thyself" since I was always sickly. "You first heal yourself", he would quip in a loving fatherly fashion but the big problem came when he would stay up late with guests preaching. Srila Prabhupada loved to preach and if someone wanted to hear about Krsna he would continue on and on, often late into the night. But then, unknown to that person who had stayed late, the next day Srila Prabhupada would feel headachy and ill and tell me: "Oh, Govinda dasi, I should take rest earlier. I should not over-exert like this". So I would be distressed to see him feeling ill and then try to curtail his late evening programs. Yet, when I would try to remind him or whisper to the devotees: "Its night, it's late, come on out now", he would usually insist on continuing. So in that sense it was a difficult job to try to remind him not to over-exert but to also be the one who was the party pooper or the bouncer. Perhaps that was the most difficult job for me in my life with Srila Prabhupada in the year and a few months that we spent with him. Yet I am still grateful for that service to Srila Prabhupada and I thank him to this day. Thank you, Srila Prabhupada for giving me the opportunity to mother you, take care of you and give you your medicine. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to be your bouncer even though a lot of devotees were very offended and I humbly request that any devotees who felt offended will please forgive me for I was only trying to do my job of keeping our spiritual master well so that he could do his work. Thank you, Srila Prabhupada for your grace on me, thank you for coming and thank you for coming back after your illness and tolerating so much inconvenience to preach in the Western world, even not being able to get your parayaliche (barayalyche??) nuts from India which was always an ongoing problem. Thank you, Srila Prabhupada.
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