Glorification of Śrīla Narahari Sevā-vigraha Prabhu
By Śrīla Bhakti Vedānta Vāmana Gosvāmī Mahārāja
Param Pūjanīya Narahari Sevā-vigraha Prabhu had an affectionate view towards everyone from the old to the young in the maṭha. I had the fortune of watching him from close proximity when I joined the maṭha in 1931. He was literally the Metron or Ma (mother) of Caitanya Maṭha and the Gauḍīya Mission. He used to take care of the needs, of all the residents of the maṭha and took responsibility of the cooking, cleaning, serving etc.
I never found him exhausted! He was always engaged in rendering service. There was never enough time left, but he also had to heed to the orders of his Gurudeva. Śrīla Prabhupāda had strict orders that everybody had to chant one lakh harināma every day. He never used to get enough time throughout the day to finish his rounds, hence he used to complete his rounds late at night. But after whole day’s of hard work he used to feel drowsy. I have heard from his own mouth that during those times he used to tie a rope to his śikhā and the other end to a wood (wood was used for cooking and kept in a wood stack). Whenever his śikhā used to get pulled, he would engage himself again in harināma. Such was the severity of his sādhanā.
But in addition to all the service he engaged in, he had a special responsibility, at 12 o’clock in the night when everyone had gone to sleep, he used to walk with a torch in his hand and I used to follow him. Caitanya Maṭha has 50 bighas of land with around 10–12 gates, he used to check if all the gates were properly closed and used to put lock and key on them. Then we used to go to the latrines. There were around 25–30 sanitary latrines, by rotation every day 2–4 had to be cleaned, he used to hold the torch and we used to clean. Every day the latrines used to be spick and span, but nobody could ever see who cleaned it at night.
Nowadays we can see there is a tendency among devotees not to engage in insignificant service. Service in the temple like washing utensils, cleaning drains, sweeping the floor—these are in general sense considered insignificant service.