WHAT IF??
[March 1972: JUHU BOMBAY, INDIA – Cornerstone laying ceremony at “Hare Krishna Land”] Atreya Rsi: In the same house, Prabhupada gave me a conch, left-handed conch, and he said, “Karttikeya has been such a great host to us and is well-wisher and so generous to us, and he has given me this conch, which is supposed to bring a lot of wealth, and I want to give it to you.”
So he gave me the conch and he said, “I never expected to be able to do all this. I thought maybe we could just have some chanting, we could have a few devotees, but I never…” and he referred to all the temples, all that.
Because Prabhupada, when he was saying that “I never expected it,” he was kind of laughing at himself.
He was saying, “Hey, I went after a little fish and I caught such a huge fish, I don’t know what happened.”
So I said, “Do you remember, Prabhupada, the story of Mullah Nasiruddin where Mullah Nasiruddin is sitting by a lake and putting some yogurt in the lake.
And people say, ‘What are you doing?’
He says, ‘I am trying to see if the whole lake will catch to become yogurt.’
They say, ‘How could that be possible?’
He said, ‘Yes, it’s not possible, but what if?’”
And we both laughed and laughed, “What if? What if?”
I said, “Yours was the same thing. You just ‘what if’ and it caught on,” and he says, “Yeah,” and we just laughed around that. It was a very joyous time.
—Atreya Rsi
I think that the photograph of Srila Prabhupada shown above is of the preaching event in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. He was warmly received by the large audience. It was on the journey between Durban and Pietermaritzburg that Srila Prabhupada noted the numerous long white buildings in the distance and asked what they were. I replied that these are chicken farms designed to raise chickens for slaughter.
Srila Prabhupada cleverly said: "Why do they bother? Why don't they make a shell, place some liquid into the shell and make a chicken?" This was a simple challenge to modern science that considers life is material, disregarding the essential element that is the conscious soul. Pusta Krishna das