Bruce Visits the Swami

Bruce:  I decided to go and speak personally to Swamiji, so I went to the storefront.  I found out that he lived in an apartment in the rear building.  A boy told me the number and said I could just go and speak with the Swami.  He said, “Yes, just go.”  So I walked through the storefront, and there was a little courtyard where some plants were growing.  Usually in New York there is no courtyard, nothing green, but this was very attractive.  And in that courtyard there was a boy typing at a picnic table, and he looked very spiritual and dedicated.  I hurried upstairs and rang the bell for apartment 2C.  After a little while the door opened, and it was the Swami.  “Yes,” he said.  And I said, “I would like to speak with you.”  He opened the door wider and stepped back and said, “Yes, come.”  We went inside together into his sitting room and sat down facing each other.  He sat behind his metal trunk-desk on a very thin mat which was covered with a woollen blanketlike cover that had frazzled ends and elephants decorating it.  He asked me my name and I told him it was Bruce.  And then he remarked, “Ah.  In India, during the British period, there was one Lord Bruce.”  And he said something about Lord Bruce being a general and engaging in some campaigns.

I felt that I had to talk to the Swami – to tell him my story – and I actually found him interested to listen.  It was very intimate, sitting with him in his apartment, and he was actually wanting to hear about me.

While we were talking, he looked up past me, high up on the wall behind me, and he was talking about Lord Caitanya.  The way he looked up, he was obviously looking at some picture of something, but with an expression of deep love in his eyes.  I turned around to see what made him look like that.  Then I saw the picture in the brown frame: Lord Caitanya dancing in kirtana.