A very pleasant drunkard!
Cittahari das: My uncle, Father Wallace, he was a Jesuit; but he was in charge of the whole of Victoria, so he was the head Jesuit. I said to my mother, “I’d like to get my uncle to meet Prabhupada.” So somehow she got that arranged. My mum was pretty good at arranging those things.
So my uncle came, and we were all sitting around in Prabhupada’s beautiful room on the beautiful blue carpet. Then he was sitting back on the chair, and he was quite an elegant sort of a guy and a very good speaker as the Jesuits are pretty well trained in philosophy. Prabhupada spoke philosophy with him quite a bit, and he seemed to be able to follow the thread of it and answer it, which most people when they met Prabhupada, they kind of lost it. Prabhupada was probing into what they understood and they couldn’t understand what they believed themselves, but he seemed to have some belief himself. Anyway, it went on for about three-quarters of an hour, having a pretty lively conversation but jokey too, a lot of laughter and so on.
Then finally the session was over, and he got up and shook hands and left. We were all sitting around Prabhupada, and Prabhupada was sitting there just kind of rocking a bit. I said, “Srila Prabhupada, what did you think of my uncle?” Prabhupada looked at us all and he smiled and he looked at me, he said, “A very pleasant drunkard.” And that was…we just all cracked up laughing because when immediately he walked in, Prabhupada must have picked up he’d had something. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a regular drinker. He had that kind of look, his face, a bit over-reddish. Yes, it was pretty well strong through the whole order at that time, I’d say, the whole Catholic church. That was the one thing the priests could do, have a good drink. The way Prabhupada could crack a joke was really amazing.