By Anita dasi
I am pretty much a homebody. In Vrndavan people are generally shocked if they come to my room and I am not there. Now that we have settled in Vashisht, I find I don’t really want to go outside this sweet mountain village nestled on the hill above Manali. I thought for book distribution we would have to venture down the hill, but it turns out that the Vashisht Rsi temple, the Sita Rama temple and hot springs draw everyone up the hill. There is a steady flow of visitors all morning and afternoon.
This is our “spot” between the Vashisht Rsi temple on the left and the Siva Temple on the right.
We set up a mat with books in front of the entrance to the temples.We sing bhajans and maha-mantra, depending upon our mood and what the crowd is calling for. Some people watch, but some join in. We meet people from all over India and also the world.
Pinky and Spidey in his Spider Man suit
In the afternoon the local kids were all out of school and hanging around. We gave those who were old enough to read a flier with the maha-mantra, and got them to sing along. They especially loved as we would chant the mantra faster and faster until they jumbled up into laughter. One girl named Pinky was especially interested in us. She chanted, watched and sat with us.
After she caught on to our program of book distribution she asked for a few books to try herself. She had amazing luck with an element of the crowd we often overlook – the kids. She distributed two or three books to a group of girls who looked about 11 or 12 from Agra. I think by the end of the night she had distributed seven or eight books. She invited us to her simple home where we met her mother and brothers. The book we had given her was already up on the small family altar. 
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