Prabhupada Liked to Take Walks

Prabhupada liked to take walks.  From his doorstep at 94 Bowery he would see directly across the street the Fulton Hotel, a five-storey flophouse.  Surrounding him were other lower Manhattan lodging houses whose tenants wandered the sidewalks from early morning until dark.  An occasional flock of pigeons would stir and fly from one rooftop to the next, or descend to the street.  Traffic was heavy.  The Bowery was part of a truck route to and from Brooklyn by way of the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges.

The Bowery sloped gently downhill toward the north.  Prabhupada could see signboards, a few scraggly Manhattan trees, and streetlights and traffic signals as far up as Fourth Street.  He could see Con Edison with its prominent clock tower, and (if there were no clouds) the top of the Empire State Building on Thirty-fourth Street.

He would walk alone in the morning through the Bowery neighborhood.  The month of May that year saw more frequent rains than was normal, and Prabhupada carried an umbrella.  Sometimes he walked in the rain.  He was not always alone; sometimes he walked with one of his new friends and talked.  Sometimes he shopped.  Bitter melon, dal, hing, chickpea flour and other specialty foods common in Indian vegetarian cuisine were available in Chinatown’s nearby markets.  On leaving the loft, he would walk south a few steps to the corner of Bowery and Hester Street.  Turning right on Hester, he would immediately be in Chinatown where the shops, markets, and even the Manhattan Savings Bank were identified by signs lettered in Chinese.  Sometimes he would walk one block further south to Canal Street with its Central Asian Food Market and many other streetside fruit and vegetable markets.  In the early morning the sidewalks were almost deserted, but as the shops began to open for business the streets became crowded with local workers, shopkeepers, tourists and aimless derelicts.  The winding streets of Chinatown were lined with hundreds of small stores.  Parked cars lined both sides of the street.

Despite the bad neighborhood where Prabhupada lived and walked, he was rarely disturbed.  Often he would find several Bowery bums asleep or unconscious at his door and he would have to step over them.  Sometimes a drunk, simply out of his inability to maneuver, would bump into him; or a derelict would mutter something unintelligible or laugh at him.  The more sober ones would stand and gesture courteously, ushering the Swami in to or out of his door at 94 Bowery.  He would pass among them, acknowledging their good manners as they cleared his path.

Certainly, few of the Bowery men and others who saw him on his walks knew much about the small, elderly Indian sadhu dressed in saffron and carrying an umbrella and a brown grocery sack.