02/17/98 - 1621

In Remembrance Of Mother Kanva

USA (VNN) - My Remembrance Of Mother Kanva (who left her body last Friday in Los Angeles)

by Srimad Bhagavata dasa

Kanva dasi: "My first meeting with Srila Prabhupada was in 1966 when I was 10 years old and he was on t.v. For just a few seconds. He said you're not that body, you are the spirit soul within the body. What an ocean of relief I felt. Millions of lifetimes of karma was washed off, and today I still feel that mercy. Srila Prabhupada ki-jaya!!!"

She had a good heart and very submissive and humble. I heard her open the fridge door and was thinking how happy I was to have her transcendental association and how easy she was to get a long with. Then next morning I heard that she had left her body. Devotees tell me that she was very attached to me and I miss her dearly.

I would get lonely living by myself every time I would pray to Krishna for good association, Kanva would be knocking on my door within a few days. She would say that she needed a temporary place to stay. Kanva was constantly cleaning, cooking and personally serving me prasadam. She would normally get up at 2:30 in the morning then chant all her rounds before Mangal Arotik. After that she liked to go to the full morning program and do a little service. She said that her main purpose was to make me Krishna Conscious. She liked telling me stories about what Srila Prabhupada especially the ones that were funny. One story I heard from her a few times was the one where Srila Prabhupada talked to a Catholic Priest telling him to give up meat. A few day's later the priest was found dead in a prostitution house. I believe this was her favorite story.

My main remembrance of Kanva was that she was always listening to Srila Prabhupada Lecture tapes with her Walkman. Also, she would have my CD player playing Srila Prabhupada Kirtans for me on my big speaker's 24 hours a day. She mentioned that she wanted her two sons to come to New Dwaraka for a little while and chant and go to some of the morning program. She even had Hare Nama Chadhars and bead bags plus a T-shirt waiting for them. I felt obligated to go with her and pick them up I told her that I would do so on Sunday the 15 of February. I first met Mother Kanva in 1977, at the Seattle Wash. Temple. She was always cleaning, very hard worker, and she would stay up till 12:30 at night, cleaning the kitchen then show up for Mangal Arotik. Her book score was only $180 a day average and other Matajis book scores were $500 a day each so her duty was to clean. (I would get puffed up just to sell 5 small books).

After 1980 I didn't see Mother Kanva until around 1990 then she lived with me on and off since then. My manager always talked about how much he liked her and that she is a genuine devotee. She was afraid of being an inconvenience so she would only stay for a month or two at a time. My apartment has a 15-day guest agreement but I don't remember me or my manager telling her that she couldn't stay any longer since she was always welcome.

Many times my manager told me that he liked her sense of humor he called her the funny one. Its easy to be straight forward and glorify Mother Kanva but the problem is that I feel still unable to explain how glorious of a devotee she actually was. She told me she had back problems once so I guess she was in a lot of pain. One thing about Kanva was that I hardly ever heard her complain about her problems or of other devotees.

I have setup a new web site in remembrance of Mother Kanva at: http://members.aol.com/bhagavatam/kanva.