By Satsvarupa dasa Goswami
I started out by remembering Janmastami 1966 in the storefront. “The room we are in now reminds me of that storefront,” I said. “It was about the same size. 1966 was the first year Prabhupada observed Janmastami in America. In 1965, he left India and observed Janmastami at sea a few days later. By 1966, ISKCON had just begun. So he asked the devotees to stay all day in the storefront and fast. “His request seemed like a very difficult proposal. Some of us expressed doubt that we could do it, so Swamiji said, ‘If you get hungry or weak in the afternoon, you can take some fruit from our refrigerator.’ “When he said that, it gave us some hope, because it seemed almost impossible that a living being could go all day without eating. He wanted us to try for it, and yet it was not such a hard and fast rule that we had to do it or die. “Fasting was one problem, and another problem was what to do all day? How to control the mind? When Prabhupada stayed with us in the storefront, reading his manuscript from the Bhagavad-gita, then it was very enjoyable. But whenever he left us alone, our consciousness and conversation dropped way down. We began to complain, ‘I don’t think I can do this. How does he expect us to stay like this all day? This is like being in prison; you can’t even leave the temple.”