[Ekadasi-dasa was Interviewed & Recorded by Yamunacarya-dasa; whose Questions & Comments are in Bold & Underlined & Blue Font.]

I remember right before Prabhupada left in Vrindavana I ,was there for the week that he left and one interesting thing I remember, is that I was sitting in his room, and there were about three people sitting in his room.  And it was Tamal Krishna and I think Upendra was there mopping the floor or something, and then there were just a couple other devotees there for the kirtana.  It must have been about four days before Prabhupada left, and Prabhupada was giving instructions to Tamal Krishna about this and that.  Tamal would read a letter off and then Prabhupada would make a comment. 

So one day Prabhupada mentioned that he had been poisoned and that is why he was so sick.  And Tamal Krishna said,

“What?  What is that, Prabhupada?” 

Moreover, Prabhupada said it very distinctly, that,

  “I have been poisoned.” 

So there were a few devotees and they were crowding around him, Upendra, Tamal and someone else.  And then Tamal says,

“Well, how do you know that you have been poisoned, Srila Prabhupada?”  T

hen Prabhupada said something which I did not hear, but Tamal heard that Prabhupada said that he had read it in a book; he knew it because he had read it in a book.  So apparently because Prabhupada was a chemist he knew what the symptoms of poisoning were, so he said that his sickness was because he had been poisoned. 

I spent a lot of time there in Prabhupada’s room in the days before he left, but that has been pretty well documented by everybody else, you know.  I remember that one day I was asked to stand guard duty on the outside of the hours, Prabhupada’s door, That was, during the days when Prabhupada had decided he wanted to go on this parikarama despite all medical advice from the Shastri.  He had decided that he wanted to go on this parikarama, and so the devotees were more or less divided in half.  Half the devotees like Ksiracora-gopinatha, swami, the Bengali swami, and Upendra, and those devotees who were pretty close to Prabhupada in serving him; they were split that he should not.  They definitely did not want him to go on this parikarama.  They did not think his health was good enough for it at all.

Then there was another camp of devotees, like that Indian swami with the bullock cart, Lokanatha Svami.

Lokanatha Swami and Hansadutta Maharaja.  They were sort of encouraging Prabhupada yes, he should go out, and because he was a pure devotee he knew exactly what would make him healthy, and that if this was his desire, then he could go ahead and do it.  So there were the two camps of devotees, so that night Tamal Krishna Maharaja got the Shastri, the Ayur Vedic doctor, from Calcutta.

Thensome other devotees, they went in Prabhupada’s room through the front door, but they instructed me they were going to lock the doo,r and under no circumstances nobody could come in and see Srila Prabhupada, because they were going to come in and persuade Prabhupada not to go on the parikarama.  After they were in there for about five minutes, Hansadutta Maharaja came along, and he was furious they were doing this without his knowledge, and he wanted to go inside.  I said,

“You cannot go inside.  I have been told that nobody is supposed to.” 

“Oh, you cannot tell me that,”

And then he sort of pushed passed me, and he went inside He did not go inside, he tried at the door, and the door was locked, and then he tried at the window, and he could not open the window.  So he was pretty frustrated, and then he disappeared ,and I guess he must have tried to go in though some other entrance.  So there was this going on; that half the devotees wanted Prabhupada to go, and the other half definitely did not want him to go.

 So it ended up that Prabhupada called it off, he would not go, that the devotees would just go and do a big kirtana.  But then the rest of the time I was there in Vrindavana and I saw what was going on.

I remember, after Srila Prabhupada left his body. he was on the palanquin, and the palanquin was carried around he temple several times.  Then it was taken into the temple and then the devotees had a big kirtana, and they danced around Prabhupada and many times Pishima, Prabhupada’s sister, would go up and she would grab Prabhupada’s feet, stick her head on his feet, during the kirtana.  That whole time in Vrindavana was very disturbing time, when Prabhupada passed away.