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Initiated
By: A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada Cause
of Death: Cerebral Malaria |
Website Nistula Prabhu Created
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Memorial By Nayanabhiram |
REMEMBERING NISTULA PRABHU, A FRIEND OF THE FOREST
He was a man of many names. The devotees knew him as Nistula Prabhu, in later life as an eco-tourism consultant in Bangladesh he was called David Buckley an assumed name on an Irish passport which enabled him to stay in his beloved Bangladesh for many years. The Mru tribal people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts called him Rengyu the name which he preferred to call himself, and his parents had called him Norm although he was far from the norm growing up in suburban Vancouver, Canada.
I don’t have too many memories of Nistula as a devotee, as by the time I’d finally met up with him in 1994 at Pundarik Dham, near Chittagong, I had left ISKCON and was writing for Diganto, the Biman Bangladesh in-flight magazine, and no longer an active devotee.
However, I do have a very distinct impression of Punkarik Dham, a Vaishnava community which he helped to establish on the samadhi grounds of Pundarik Vidyanidhi, a wealthy householder who became a follower of Sri Chaitanya. Although Pundarik himself was no Goswami but a householder, the community designed by Nistula was made up of simple adobe mud huts with thatched roofs and blended in with the local village architecture. Like most Bengali settlements, there was a pukoor (pond) and surrounded by coconut palms and pleasant gardens. As the temple president, Nistula took great pains to maintain it and to maintain the simple living, high thinking philosophy that sustained it.
His idea, following the ISKCON Founder-Acarya, was to make a self-sufficient community with agriculture it was surrounded by seas of rice paddy fields--with dairy-farming and cow-protection, and of course a temple which attracted thousands of local devotees during the Pundarik mela in which thousands were fed prasadam. Pundarik Dham reminded me of the original concept of Mayapur in its early days, and from which Nistula and others had felt it had deviated in its recent years of over-development and loss of sustainable agriculture much to his disgust.
His outlook was radically conservative, flirting with Neo-Luddite movements to end dependence on machinery. In a time when Bangladeshis wanted to modernize and shed their basket-case image, Nistula wanted the community to get off the (electric) grid, and in the evenings he would look forward to the lighting of oil lamps for illumination.
He also admired the Mennonites who ran an NGO in Dhaka and their production of hand-made paper from water-hyacinth and banana pith which he briefly experimented with.
He was passionate in his concerns for the environment and was a strong critic of development aid which Bangladesh had come to depend upon. He loved the common folk and enjoyed speaking Bangla in which he was fluent. For a long time, he lived an ascetic, semi-reclusive existence in remote Pundarik Dham, near Hathazari occasionally shuttling into Chittagong about 40 minutes away by baby-taxi, but eschewing the crowded capital which we both called Daffy Dhaka.
Even in ISKCON whose Gaudiya Vaishnava lineage is based in Bengal (now mostly in modern-day Bangladesh) few devotees tend to visit the country in which Lord Caitanya’s father and other great devotees were born. Perhaps one reason is that now, since Partition, the majority community is Muslim. But as a broad-minded devotee, Nistula felt at home with everyone and in later years out of respect for Muslim neighbors and associates would fast during Ramadan, and offer pranams at various Buddhist and Hindu shrines.
Once while I was visiting Pundarik Dham, I asked Nistula to accompany me to help research a story on Rangamati which was then a restricted area which required entry permits due to the tribal insurgency. Surrounded by lakes and forests, Rangamati in the Chittagong Hill Tracts is one of the most scenic areas of the otherwise monotonously flat delta of Bangladesh. The tribals practice swidden (slash-and-burn-agriculture) and many live on the shores of picturesque Kaptai lake.
Nistula used to say, When I come to Rangamati, I weep. Instead of this beautiful lake, I see pools of tears. The deep gorges of the powerful Karnaphuli river, the valleys and hills, he explained, were all flooded by a creation of the Kaptai Dam back in the 1960s, during the pre-Liberation War days of the then East Pakistan administration, when forty percent of arable lands were taken from the indigenous people to generate electricity for the lowlanders in the world’s largest delta, while 100,000 hill people lost their ancestral homes and many lost their lives as well. The islands are actually what’s left of the tips of hilltops after the devastating man-made flood. The irony is that despite having lost their lands for the dam, many tribals still have no electricity here, some thirty years later.
As Nistula began to lose interest in ISKCON politics, the daily temple management and petty squabbling of householders who had little interest in his broader vision, he became more concerned with the environment and the simple culture of the indigenous peoples of the Hill Tracts. Relinquishing management of Pundarik Dham, he established Bangladesh Eco-Tours with his Bengali partner Didar, and two years ago his website was written up in TIME magazine as the best, and most informative on Bangladesh.
The above photo is courtesy of http://www.bangladeshecotours.com/about.html .
I think that as a travel writer I had some influence in his eco-tourism pursuits and we used to go on many excursions together in the Hill Tracts. And although he didn’t feel comfortable mixing with Establishment and Development NGO people at Dhaka garden parties, he realized that if he wanted to attract them as clients, he would have to alter his hermetic lifestyle and do some networking in Dhaka which he never felt too comfortable with, preferring to generate interest on the internet.
Although he admired the tribal communities, he had less respect for those that became westernized and assimilated like the dominant Chakmas, and sought out those that were still considered primitive. His serendipitous discovery of the Mru, a primitive tribe that straddles both sides of the Bangla-Myanmar border really excited him and changed his life. Here was a people that, but for the encroachment of Bengali settlers near their primeval forest lands, were living almost in some pre-historic age like so-called Noble Savages. They were simple people who both male and female were naked but for a loin cloth. The males wore their hair long in a signature bun and adorned themselves with flowers over the ears which bore pendulous hoop earrings a quaint custom which he himself adopted, giving him a decidedly eccentric look especially in urban Chittagong or Dhaka.
One of the Mru dubbed Nistula/David as Rengyu which has some meaning in their language (big Snake), and he kept the name. Rengyu (Nistula) took many groups to a Mru village near Alikadam where he had set up a cabin for visitors who were treated as part of their community and I had the privilege of staying there once that is, before it got burnt down by a careless, less than eco-sensitive tourist.
Observing the simple lifestyle of these flower and feather adorned forest-dwellers who sometimes hunted with blow-pipe darts, I have no doubt that they must have reminded Nistula of the denizens of another forest--Krishna and the cowherd boys of Vrindavan who also adorned themselves with leaves and flowers and lived a simple pastoral lifestyle which he wished to emulate.
It was within these dense forests near the Myanmar border while leading a French anthropologist on an expedition, that our banabandhu (friend of the forest) was stricken by cerebral malaria and passed away in the forest that he loved.
His body was taken back to Chittagong, but with no family or relatives to claim it, the police naturally brought him to Pundarik Dham, the community he established. From what I heard, due to his having fallen out with some of the ISKCON leadership there, they were at first reluctant to accept the body but the police insisted, and when the local villagers found out about it hundred of mourners some estimate over a thousand came to pay their last respects.
Now, here is where it gets even more interesting if not absurdly ironic. I was told by a close friend of his in Dhaka that our dear friend was buried at Pundharik Dham. When we went to the memorial ceremony/gathering at the dham, there were photos of Nistula's body laid out, which was then dressed in his devotee robes, annoted with sandalwood, decked with marigold, etc., surrounded by other Krishna symbols and so on, and his body was even manipulated into a sitting lotus position not entirely successfully. He was buried like a Christian rather than cremated. A rather strange fate for someone who became an iconoclast and left his ancestral Christian beliefs at an early age, adopted the Bengali Vaishnava tradition, respected and followed certain Islamic practices (such as fasting during Ramadan) and championed the simple animistic culture of the indigenous forest-dwellers but never had a good word to say at all about Christianity! Perhaps those last rites were the price he paid for adopting an Irish passport and assuming the name of one David Buckley. In any case, he must be chuckling somewhere, as he always had a good sense of the absurd, as one must to survive in Bangladesh.
As for the rest of us, we lost a dear friend and a banabandhu a friend of the forest.
By Nayanabhiram dasa (Daniel B Haber)
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Memorial By Ananda Tirtha Das |
It was with shock and dismay that I learned of the untimely demise of HG. Nistula Prabhu of Bangladesh. Just a couple of days prior to receiving the news, I had sent him an email and was expecting a typically kind and witty reply from him. Many thanks to Nayanabhiram Prabhu for writing such a brilliant and detailed personal description of Nistula Prabhu's life. Just now I re-read all his old letters to me. He always comes across as unbelievably kind, humble, and self-effacing. Such rare qualities in this age. In real life too, my association with him in Mayapur and Bangladesh confirms these qualities. He was always so kind and hospitable, always ready to help out in any way he could. He would treat me as a friend rather than the teeny god-nephew of no great character that I am. I hadn't been in touch with him for ages when I by chance came across his website last year and re-connected with him through correspondence. I am thankful for that, but so regret not meeting him on my last trip to Bangladesh. . . .
My own association with him was pretty limited but I was always intrigued at how he had so totally left behind his western ways and wholeheartedly taken up Bengali life. How fitting it is that he has been laid to rest at Sri Pundarik Dham, the holy tirtha which he dedicated so many years of his life to developing. Surely Srila Prabhupada is greatly pleased by his humble disciple's efforts in such an austere preaching field. He might have had some shortcomings, but nobody can minimize the service he has performed. It might be speculative to say this, but considering his life and service, I think it not unlikely that, at the very least, he has now taken birth in a Bengali Vaisnava family to perfect his development of Krishna-Bhakti. If anyone can provide more details of the ceremony held in his honor and the reaction of his many devotee friends in Bangladesh I would be very grateful to hear it.
My words are not sufficient to honor Nistula Prabhu's memory. I do hope more of his Godbrothers under whom he worked in Bangladesh will write memorials for him. . . .
May Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu and Srila Prabhupada forever bless and take care of His Grace Nistula Prabhu!
Forever missing your sanga,
Your humble servant,
Ananda Tirtha Das (atd@pamho.net)
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Memorial By Toshan Krishna Dasa |
This is rather a belated attempt at glorifying Nistula Prabhu, but sadly I have only just heard of his leaving his body. more than two months after the event.
Ironically I was in the kitchen when the new of his death was broken to me. Over ten years earlier at Pundarik Dhama in Bangladesh, as an uninitiated but enthusiastic bhakta, I had purchased some bhoga in the hope of cooking a nice offering for Sri Sri Vrishabhanavi- Murari and Their devotees. Some protested that if I cooked then they wouldn't perform their service, and so I was left disappointed and despondent. Nistula Prabhu assured me "Don't despair, one day you'll have the opportunity to cook for Krishna." And so more than ten years later whilst cooking for over 800 guests and devotees on the occasion of celebrating Sri Krishna Janmastami , Ananda Tirtha Prabhu informed me that Nistula Prabhu had left his body the previous May.
I feel I've lost a best friend and a soul mate. For many years I'd been desiring to return to Bangladesh with my family to visit Pundarik Dhama and also to meet up with Nistula Prabhu, wherever he had got too. I'd heard that he had left ISKCON, but was offered no specific information as to where he was and what he was doing. My regret at not being in touch for nearly five years compounds my grief over his disappearance.
I first met Nistula Prabhu in 1990. At that time I was an ISKCON life member and my father had just passed away. Still mourning my fathers death, I took my mother to visit Pundarik Dhama. As we had had finished taking darshan and were preparing to leave, we were approached by a western man. Nistula Prabhu had been waiting to meet us, and upon learning of my name and life membership status he treated us with great honour, inviting us to his room and organising for prasad to be brought for us. He requested we come to Pundarik Dhama any time, and I felt an immediate kinship with him. That period was one of immense suffering for me. I'd lost my father and was searing from the stress of business and family life, ripe for the transition from materialist to aspiring devotee. I made the trip to Pundarik Dhama again, this time with offers of financial assisstance for the temple. Nistula Prabhu took the opportunity to engage me in some of his self-sufficiency projects for Pundarik Dhama. I helped finance and build a bullock-driven oil-crusher, and a paper-mill deriving ingredients from water hyacinth and banana leaves.(Later when I moved to New Zealand any letters I received from him were written on the paper he produced.) He was very pleased to have these projects up and running, and as he engaged me more and more in Krishna's service, Pundarik Dhama became my real home. Still in my devotional infancy, I expressed my desire to Nistula Prabhu to help those outside of the temple as well, thinking it selfish that we develop a place of self sufficiency while others had not enough food or proper clothing. I took him to an orphanage and suggested we purchase some ducks and chickens with which they could farm for profit. It was at this stage that he explained to me that every living creature has a soul and that we had no right to kill them. We explored other possible means of helping the orphanage instead. On one occasion I made a visit to see Nistula Prabhu to discuss the projects development, but he explained that he hadn't been able to do much work as some devotees had cut the cables on his computer. He pointed out the devotees to me- some rather large and hungry rodents residing in his room. My immediate reaction was to buy some rat poison but at this suggestion I was admonished for my demoniac mentality. He explained that the rats were hungry and he preferred I buy some food for them. When I next saw him, his first enquiry was regarding the rat food. I had bought some puffed rice, and he mixed it with molasses and left it for the rodent Bhaktas.
Another time in his room I killed a mosquito that had bitten me and he called me "a demon" for taking the life of another creature. (Eventually it would be a creature of the same species that would be responsible for taking his life.) He respected any insect or animal that resided in Pundarik Dhama as a devotee. Once, upon finding a fish had passed away in the temple pond, he removed its body from the water and then buried it with flowers and Tulasi leaves as if in samadhi. When a local boy caught a fish in the temple grounds Nistula Prabhu chased him "like a madman" , but unable to catch the boy he instead went to his parents explaining that he would rather give them money to buy fish elsewhere than have them catching and killing temple devotees. Indeed Krishna appeared, as Matsya Avatar and likewise devotees could inhabit any type of body. As long as these creatures resided in the temple grounds they were devotees, taking prasad and hearing Krishna's transcendental kirtana. Nistula Prabhu would regularly be seen talking to the ant, rat, fish and cow devotees of Pundarik Dhama, asking them "Haribol! How are you? Have you had enough prasad today?"
In my ignorance I used to argue and debate with Nistula Prabhu often, and thinking it hypocritical that he worked the oil-crushing oxen hard whilst bestowing so much compassion upon the other life -forms, I teased him about his. He was quick to defeat me, explaining that the bullock was very satisfied to be using his body in the service of Krishna. "You're a workaholic" he pointed out "would you be very happy if someone took your work away?"
Through Nistula Prabhus’ sincere displays of compassion to every living entity , he gradually taught me the nature of the body and the soul, and Pundarik Dham became my Gurukula.
I have so many recollections of my pastimes with Nistula Prabhu it shall take some time to write them categorically. Please forgive my grammatical errors and shortcomings in my attempt.
Your servant Toshan Krishna Dasa
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Photos |
Nistula Prabhu from photo website
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Nistula Prabhu
stands outside one of the charming buildings he made at Pundarik Dham(near
Chittagong, Bangladesh)
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Nistula wearing
traditional Mru hilltribe silver earings
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Nistula meets with
Mru tribal elders
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Nistula sporting a
traditional Bangla country hat which kept off both sun and rain.
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Nistula cuddles a
small Mru boy
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Nistula relaxes in a
dhoti, wearing Tulsi Mala (sacred beads) in his Kutir at Pundarik Dham
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The above photos are courtesy of http://www.fotolog.net/aravinda/