Prabhupāda: Hare Kṛṣṇa. (break) Dr. Karttika Chandra Bose, he was a very big man. I was, under him, manager of Bose's laboratory. So from the very beginning my father was paying him two rupees fees. But when he became very big, still my father was paying two rupees. He was friend. So he refused to take. "No, no, no, you must be paid something." So he used to accept that two rupees. (break)
Yaśomatīnandana: Two rupees in those days were lot of money.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Two rupees, nowadays forty rupees at least. Twenty times. Just like ghee. You can... Ghee or gold. Gold standard. So in our childhood, I have seen our mother used to purchase gold for ornaments-twenty rupees.
Dr. Patel: Eighteen, twenty rupees.
Yaśomatīnandana: Now it is six hundred. Six?
Dr. Patel: Seven hundred.
Yaśomatīnandana: Thirty-five times.
Dr. Patel: When I was married, gold was at nineteen rupees and fifty paisa.
Prabhupāda: No. No, no.
Dr. Patel: In 1930.
Prabhupāda: Nineteen rupees?
Dr. Patel: Nineteen rupees and a half.
Prabhupāda: Per tola?
Dr. Patel: Per tola.
Prabhupāda: No, no.
Dr. Patel: In 1930. 1930, yes.
Indian man (1): Sovereign cost eighteen rupees.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Because...
Dr. Patel: Sovereign was fourteen rupees.
Prabhupāda: In our marriage in 1918...
Dr. Patel: It was more because the First World War. Then it slumped down.
Prabhupāda: It dropped.
Dr. Patel: And the lowest was in 1930. Then it rose. Then in 1935 it was thirty rupees and in 1940 it was thirty-eight, and 1950 it was fifty rupees. And 1956 we bought at the rate of fifty-six rupees. I still remember that because we have been buying gold every year.
Indian man (2): 1959 or '60 the price was ninety-six rupees.
Dr. Patel: Then suddenly it rose. Now, because Americans are buying gold, the gold standard has been left out. They have taken, cornered the gold of the whole world. But I have heard that the Russians have got some gold mountains on the surface. They can take out gold very easily from there. Here you have to dig up deep down.
Prabhupāda: No, in South Africa there is gold. In the city there are so many gold mines in South Africa.
Dr. Patel: Yes. South Africa is today supplying more than half of the world gold. Our mines are getting exhausted in Kolar(?) and all this, Mysore State. America, they have not been able to search out gold anywhere. Perhaps in South America they may be having some gold mines, but they have not made any survey. But the Russians, they say there are very huge mountains, gold on the surface.
Yaśomatīnandana: Sumeru is made of gold, Śrīla Prabhupāda?
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Yaśomatīnandana: Where is that located? (laughter)
Dr. Patel: In your mind.
Prabhupāda: No. Where is the sun located now?
Yaśomatīnandana: 93,000,000...
Prabhupāda: No, no. Sun. Sun. Where is located now?
Yaśomatīnandana: Oh, it's out of my sight.
Prabhupāda: You cannot see it.
Yaśomatīnandana: Sumeru we cannot see. It's not on the earth?
Prabhupāda: You can, but you have no eyes.
Dr. Patel: (Hindi) I call him also mahārāja. He's a brāhmaṇa.
Yaśomatīnandana: Brahma-bandhu.
Dr. Patel: I don't know whether you are a bandhu or yourself. Well, I call you what I...
Nanda-kumāra: In South America one man went up the Amazon River and he found a place where he could pick gold nuggets up out of the water.
Dr. Patel: Gold nuggets are there in the rivers, so many, in Africa.
Prabhupāda: Gold?
Dr. Patel: Gold nuggets. Because gold never get, I mean, oxidized. It is always in (unclear). So nuggets, they are available in big rivers even in Africa. Because when they come through the mountain, you know.
Prabhupāda: There is one river in India also, Suvarna-rekha, between Orissa and Bengal.
Dr. Patel: The sand is of the...
Prabhupāda: Yes. There you can find gold.
Brahmānanda: The city of Johannesburg is built on a gold reef, a reef of gold. There's so much gold there, and to dig it up they will have to break the city streets. They have deliberately built the city on top of the gold.
Dr. Patel: That South Africa is in the belt of Brazil more or less. And Brazil is very difficult place to search about this because they are all jungle, no? Brazil and south of Brazil. (break)
Prabhupāda: ...Russians do not utilize the gold...
Dr. Patel: They think gold has got no value so far as value... Because it is a stamping metal. Otherwise what use it can be made of? So far as the society is concerned, iron is more important than gold, to tell the truth.
Prabhupāda: So let them exchange.
Dr. Patel: From the utility point of view.
Prabhupāda: Let them exchange. We give them iron. (laughter) Let me...
Dr. Patel: They don't want to. They may use it at some future date.
Prabhupāda: Therefore they are rascals.