Traveling by car to San Diego, on Sri Ramacandra’s appearance day, I relaxed in the front passenger seat, resting from my intense schedule at New Dvaraka, and the twelve-hour flight from New Zealand, four days before. While fully stopped at a red light, I heard the screeching of tires behind us and then—BOOM! I flew out of my seat forward to the windshield, crying out “Krishna!”
A big SUV (four-wheel-drive monster car) had crashed head on into the back of our small car. Its inattentive driver had not seen until too late all the cars stopped ahead of him at the red light. With Harideva at the wheel and Carana Renu and Mukunda in the back seat, we were driving from the Los Angeles temple to the evening celebration in San Diego, two hours down the highway. The devotees there had begged me to visit, and I was honoured to comply, especially since gracing that temple are my esteemed Godbrothers Badrinarayan and Dravida prabhus. Always eager to savor the association of saintly persons, I looked forward to Badrinarayan Prabhu’s world-famous wit and ISKCON insight, as well as Dravida Prabhu’s memories of when we both came to Krishna’s lotus feet in New York, early 1973.
Upon the crash hurling me forward, the seat belt, preventing my hitting the windshield, slammed me back just as abruptly. Somehow, our car incurred only slight damage, although the SUV had hit us so hard that you could read the numbers of its front license plate embedded deeply into the back rubber-bumper of our car. We continued on our way to San Diego for a night of kirtan and rama-katha. Back in Los Angeles, the next morning, the muscular soreness hit. The morning after, at mangal aratik, while I offered my obeisances to the Deities, Sri Sri Rukmini Dvarakadisha, in farewell, Svavas Prabhu, the veteran temple president, warned me, “Be careful; hidden problems from such a crash can arise later.”
That same morning I flew from the west coast across the USA and the Atlantic to Manchester, England. There, still stiff and sore, I sought out a doctor, because I knew that Harideva’s insurance company in the USA would want to see a doctor’s report. “Whiplash injury” was the routine diagnosis. “Oh well,” I thought, “at least I’ll get some money for Krishna’s service out of all this.” After two days in Manchester at Candidas’s flat, next stop was Wales; two days later, Germany.
In Frankfurt, Candidas’s father, Frank-Peter Seidenberg, was eager to use his Easter holidays to drive me around the eastern side of Germany in a brand new Mercedes he had acquired just for the purpose. Ahh . . . a flickering taste of comfort in the wilderness . . . . Candidas and the Germany regional leader, my Godsister Dina Sarana dasi also came. Appropriately entitled by me twenty years ago as Kaiserin, German for “empress,” Dina Sarana, the Kaiserin (the feminine form of Kaiser), though a householder lady in her late fifties, had dedicated her full energies to the revival of ISKCON Germany. Her powerful selfless efforts and bold, decisive leadership had inspired even senior ISKCON sannyasis to take note, in utter respect and admiration.
To garner your sympathy, let me recap for you the nonglamorous austerities of sannyasi traveling: a twelve-hour flight from New Zealand to Los Angeles and then, four days later, a two-hour drive back and forth to San Diego, complete with an auto crash. Two days later, a five-hour flight from Los Angeles to Chicago; a layover of four hours before connecting to an eight-hour flight to Manchester, England; two days later, a four-hour drive to Cardiff, Wales; then a one-hour drive after a programme to Swansea, Wales; a day or so of programmes there and then a four-hour drive to the London Heathrow airport to get a two-hour flight to Frankfurt, Germany.
The next morning, after the late-night arrival in Frankfurt, I made a quick visit to a physiotherapist, for a massage, as the doctor in England had advised. Immediately after, our party drove through Easter weekend traffic six hours to Weimar, a university city, to start our tour of ISKCON preaching centres in East Germany. A programme there straightaway upon arrival, and then the next morning, we drove four hours to Berlin, arriving in time for their Saturday evening feast programme. A Bhagavatam class the next morning, and then we were on our way three hours to Leipzig for their Sunday evening feast. At 4am Monday morning, we left to drive five hours back to Frankfurt, so I could catch a two-hour flight to Helsinki, Finland. As soon as I arrived at the Helsinki temple, I did a three-hour programme. The next day in Helsinki were two programmes, but I did get time to swim in between. And since saunas are to Finland as saris and dhotis are to India, a few brahmacaris and I fraternized in that way. Seven o’clock the following morning meant boarding the six-hour train across the border to St. Petersburg, Russia.
Now here begins the intense medical dramas. Visiting me at the flat where I stay in St. Petersburg, Srivas Pandit, a devotee doctor specializing in muscle and bone affairs, noticed I was getting dizzy. By the next day I was completely sluggish, as if I had been punched silly by a heavyweight boxer. Little did I know that, anticipating trouble, Srivas Pandit had already consulted other devotee doctors, and a neurologist was on the way.
‘What’s the big deal,” I told the neurologist. “I gave class for two hours this morning.” His response: “Can you please close your eyes and touch your nose with both forefingers?” Twice I tried and missed, only connecting to my mouth instead. When he asked me to try two more times, I had the great idea to feel for my nose by using my forefingers to sense the heat from the air my nostrils exhaled. I landed on target, but the neurologist told me I had cheated, so I still failed the test. He banged my limbs with his hammer and noted that the right side of my body was more sensitive than the left. He waved a small light in front of my eyes and I became dizzy following it. After a few more tests, he made his pronouncement.
“You are in a serious condition that precedes a stroke. Blood circulation to the brain has been impeded by the whiplash neck injury.” Immediately the alarm went out through the devotee medical community, and a squadron of Vaisnava and Vaisnavi doctors, waiting for the outcome, descended upon my abode.
“You can’t travel now; you have to get a brain scan; you’re in bad shape, etc., etc.,” they told me. Like a sense gratifier who reasons that since he feels fine at the moment, all is ok for the future, and there’ll be no karmic reactions, I calmly responded, “I don’t know what all the fuss is about; I’m just a little dizzy, that’s all.”
Meanwhile my aspiring-disciple doctor Julia, conspiring and coordinating from behind the scenes, shrewdly stayed out of my firing range. “You may think you’re all right now,” the devotee doctors declared authoritatively, “but if you don’t do what we say, you’ll be in a hospital bed!”
A Russian hospital! Better to lay my body down on the floor in the middle of a train station! All the horror tales I had read in tourist guidebooks poured through my mind. The ordinary Russian hospital system was notorious.
I felt cornered and pinned down. I had to surrender to these medical authorities, some of them even my own disciples. After all, what did I know about neurology? Should I just speculate defiantly or accept their dictation? I felt like a newcomer to Krishna consciousness upon his or her first grappling with the concept of paramapara knowledge and spiritual authority. Should I resist or surrender?
The devotional medical destiny took its course. I had to submit to IV, intravenous medicine—the drip. The plan was to administer drugs in this way, to thin my blood and ward off any impending stroke. Julia and another devotee doctor, Natalia, came to where I stayed. Laden with all the necessary equipment and drugs, they thus spared me a trip to a hospital.
“Which arm do you want the IV tube in, the right or the left?” Julia asked. “What kind of choice is that,” I retorted to my spiritual student. “It’s like the illusory manifestation of independence in conditioned life--to choose type A maya or type B, both of which lead to suffering.” She intelligently answered, “Hmmm, if you choose the left arm, you can chant japa with your right.” I congratulated her: “Well said. This is yukta-vairagya, using all material situations for the service of the Lord; rather than merely pronouncing them illusory and useless.”
Two hours daily, I had to submit to the drip. Before and after, I was shuttled around the city for neck x-rays, arranged by Yamuna devi, and an MRI scan at a medical research centre, where they wheel your whole body inside a huge machine and you lay there, as if in a cocoon, for a half hour, for a picture of the brain. Also, the devotee doctors piled upon me a mountain of prescription pills to take thrice daily. “Synthetic drugs,” I moaned. “I haven’t taken them in over twenty-five years! I’ve only taken natural herbs.” My protests were ignored. My health situation was dangerous, on the edge. What would come next, I didn’t know. I had to surrender.
(To be continued)