At 3 am I woke up with so much pain in my ankle. The afternoon before I managed to ring the bell at the Manu temple, but I took quite a digger. In the middle of the night everything always seems bleak. I was thinking, how can I distribute books when I can’t even manage the 50 stairs into town from our guest house? Maybe I should get an x-ray. If it’s bad, should we call off the trip and go back to Vrndavan? So many grim thoughts, but then some inspiration came. Our god-brother Jitendriya prabhu is a healer trained in a variety of arts like massage, ayurveda and reiki. I waited until a semi decent hour and called him. Mid morning I hobbled to his place. After half an hour of torture . . . ah I mean treatment I had so much more mobility and again felt optimistic. I rested for the day, he gave another treatment in the evening and surprisingly today my ankle was back to 80% and we were able to go again for book distribution. It’s so nice to feel that Srila Gurudeva was taking care and that even in a little place like Vashishsta that a god-brother was there to help.
Hero of the day – Jitendriya prabhu
Today we went to the Hadimba temple. Hadimba was married to Bhima, when the Pandavas where in hiding, after Bhima killed her man-eating brother.
Hadimba temple
We set our mat with books near the temple and began signing bhajans. A small crowd gathered to watch us, but we also caught the attention of the temple authorities. They told us we could not sell anything there and needed to move to the mela grounds just outside the entrance. We joined the menagerie of booths with everything from bungee trampoline jumping, to custom painted key chains, to yak rides.
So we adjusted; one or two of would stay with the books on the mat and the others would approach people.
People are completely bombarded by hawkers approaching them with all kinds of stuff like saffron, sun glasses, and hot pink cotton candy, so sometimes they would even ignore you when you asked them if they wanted a book. At first it’s a blow to the ego to be completely blanked by people, but after 20 or so misses I would find someone sincerely happy to get the book. That experience erased the others and helps me to keep perspective. Its not that I am another hawker, but I am an agent of Srila Gurudeva, waiting for those souls who while journeying in this world have the good fortune to come in contact with one of these books.
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