Prabhupāda: Dress, jewelry, and foodstuff, oh... Would offer kacuris, very big, first-class, and luci, all very crispy.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Ah, crispy.
Prabhupāda: Yes. And ghee and rābṛi and similarly other... In the plate, you see?
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Wow!
Prabhupāda: And it was the custom of the Mulliks, daily prasādam, they should not eat all of them. Keep something as a balance—some neighborhood men, they will sell. This was...
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Distribution of prasādam.
Prabhupāda: Distribution.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Practically you learned all these things in those early days...
Prabhupāda: Hm. Hm.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: ...at Rādhā-Govinda Temple.
Prabhupāda: Yes, that was the training in the childhood. This Ratha-yātrā, Rādhā-Govinda sevā, prasāda distribution. Only the new thing I am doing-writing of books by the order of Guru Mahārāja. Otherwise, whatever I have introduced, I was trained up in childhood. I simply imitated. I am simply surprised. Now nowadays, even a low class... Formerly all our maidservant and neighborhood maidservant, they had two business, one prostitute and one maidservant. Otherwise they could not maintain. Simply by becoming maidservant, no sufficient income. We were paying them for not whole time three rupees.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Wow!
Prabhupāda: Per month. So one house, three rupees, another house, three rupees, another house... In this way their income was ten to twelve rupees. Well that was not sufficient.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Not much.
Prabhupāda: So they had to allow the prostitution. But they were happy. But in that income in those men, they had a guru. The guru would come.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: They had a guru.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Even the maidservants.
Prabhupāda: In Bengal there was professional guru. They travel from one house to another. Our paternal guru was coming like that.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: You had a professional guru also?
Prabhupāda: Hm?
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: You had a paternal guru?
Prabhupāda: Yes. I was initiated by that professional guru at the age of twelve years. Later on I rejected him.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: I wonder if he had any thought that his disciple, Your Divine Grace, would be one day such a devotee all over the world. You always said that's the perfection of a guru, if he has good disciple. So your professional guru had a best disciple.
Prabhupāda: Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Gosvāmī later on, when I was young man, manager in Dr. Bose's laboratory... That my friend, Narend Mullik, he took me. There is direction. For real guru one can give up this professional guru.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Prabhupāda: So all of a sudden I remember this Nanda Dulal Gosai. I was thinking of him. What a great devotee he was. He was observing some of the festivals, I think, Janmāṣṭamī or Nandotsava, something, inviting friends, offering good prasādam. And he was living in a quarter full of Muhammadans.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Full of Marwaris.
Prabhupāda: Muhammadans.