Swamiji Puts on Tilak

After his bath he would come into the front room, where his assembled followers would sit around him.  He would sit on a mat facing his picture of the Panca-tattva, and after putting a few drops of water in his left palm from a small metal spoon and bowl, he would rub a lump of Vrindavana clay in the water, making a wet paste.  He would then apply the clay markings of Vaisnava tilaka, dipping into the yellowish paste in his left hand with the ring finger of his right.  He would scrape wet clay from his palm, and while looking into a small mirror which he held deftly between the thumb and pinkie of his left hand, he would mark a vertical clay strip up his forehead and then trim the clay into two parallel lines by placing the little finger of his right hand between his eyebrows and running it upward past the hairline, clearing a path in the still-moist clay.  Then he marked eleven other places on his body, while the boys sat observing, sometimes asking questions or sometimes speaking their own understandings of Krishna consciousness.

Prabhupada:  My Guru Maharaja used to put on tilaka without a mirror.

Devotee:  Did it come out neat?

Prabhupada:  Neat or not neat, that does not matter.  Yes, it was also neat. 

Prabhupada would then silently recite the Gayatri mantra.  Holding his brahmin’s sacred thread and looping it around his right thumb, he would sit erect, silently moving his lips.  His bare shoulders and arms were quite thin as was his chest, but he had a round slightly protruding belly.  His complexion was as satiny smooth as a young boy’s, except for his face, which bore signs of age.  The movements of his hands were methodical, aristocratic, yet delicate.