Prabhupada: In Bengal there are professional gurus. They travel from one house to another. Our paternal guru was coming like that.

Tamala Krsna: You had a professional guru also?

Prabhupada: Yes. I was initiated by that professional guru at the age of twelve years. Later on I rejected him.

Tamala Krsna: I wonder if he had any thought that his disciple, Your Divine Grace, would be one day such a devotee all over the world. You always said that’s the perfection of a guru, if he has good disciple. So your professional guru had a best disciple.

Prabhupada: But Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Gosvami later on, when I was young man, manager in Dr. Bose’s laboratory… That my friend, Narendra Mullick, he took me. There is direction, for real guru one can give up this professional guru.

Tamala Krsna: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Prabhupada: So all of a sudden I remember this Nanda Dulal Pine. I was thinking of him, what a great devotee he was. He was observing some of the festival, I think Janmastami or Nandotsava, something, inviting friends, offering good prasadam. And he was living in a quarter full of Muhammadans.

Tamala Krsna: Full of Marwaris.

Prabhupada: Muhammadans.

Tamala Krsna: Muhammadans. Hmm.

Prabhupada: Low-class Muhammadans.

Tamala Krsna: He didn’t mind that?

Prabhupada: No, at that time they were so friendly.

Tamala Krsna: Really? They were respectful.

Prabhupada: Muhammadans were also religious.

Tamala Krsna: Right.

Prabhupada: One Muhammadan gentleman, Dinu Miya, he was formerly Hindu, but when there was some famine… [break] He also made so many charitable institutions. He had a masjid, one etimakhana. Etimakhana means orphan house.

Tamala Krsna: Means?

Prabhupada: Orphan house. He was cutting throat of the chicken on the street.

Tamala Krsna: That’s not a very nice business.

Prabhupada: We were accustomed. His servant, they would do. But we have seen it.

Tamala Krsna: What did you think when you saw that?

Prabhupada: All of a sudden they were cutting. Nowadays these Hindus are cutting.

> Conversation about Old Days in Calcutta – July 1, 1977, Vrndavana