Totally fasting till full-moon rise, as per the scripture’s injunction, I entered the jewelry shop and in the left hand back-corner, behind a counter, there was a lady dressed in immaculate white garments. There certainly were plenty of glittering lights and pieces of jewelry to be seen! I greeted her and offered “With Love” by Her Grace Rajeswari Devi Dasi, (Jolanda Sloderbach), the most successful cookbook I have ever sold for Krishna. Raje’s cookbook “With Love” came at the right historical point of time. All over the world, veganism is in full upswing. Out of the goodness of their hearts, people are very much concerned about animal cruelty and consequently about animal welfare. We may therefore confidently assume that the publication of “With Love” is a representation of Lord Krishna’s special wish and arrangement, a very distinguished credit to the author.

After some short time, she seemed to accept the idea of buying “With Love” by Raje. I acted on the assumption that this lady was Hindu and in a second move, I offered Srila Prabhupada’s hard bound, one volume, Krishna Book that I was still holding in my left hand. Perhaps I asked her three times maximum to please buy Krishna Book as well. She surrendered and gave me the appropriate amount for the two books. This represents a significant sale. Cookbooks are really some sort of a Trojan Horse and cookbook distribution should therefore not be neglected at all. They provide the book distributor preacher inroads for the real business. Cookbook distribution also represents easy practice for the beginner, because of the public’s natural attraction for cookbooks and the established image of charity-selling-cookbooks everyone can relate too. The real business however is the promotion of Krishna consciousness in the form of Srila Prabhupada’s own books. Very recently, I met for the second time another young lady, Sara of the Sunshine Coast, to whom I had sold Adiraja’s “The Hare Krishna Book of Vegetarian Cooking” perhaps two or three years ago. This time she declined to buy another cookbook, but instead, on her own volition, she purchased a copy of Srila Prabhupada’s hard bound Bhagavad-Gita As It Is. Her justification was: ”It feels right!”

I was a little perplexed at the situation in the shop, because the lady’s husband name on the business card sounded rather Moslem. So I ventured:” So you are Hindu?” The reply came as: “No, I am Moslem.” I mentioned: “O, you are very wise Moslem family. Thank you very much”. Let us not forget that Shri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, the Supreme Personality of Godhead Himself, Whose birthday it was on the day, five hundred years ago, in Bengal, India, elevated the Moslem born Haridas Thakura to one of the highest distinction of Acarya of the chanting of the Holy Name, or Nama-Acarya Hari das Thakura. And let us not forget either, that both Sanatan Goswami and his younger brother Rupa Goswami were both totally ostracized by the brahmin community, because of accepting positions of ministers in the Moslem government of Nawab Hussein Shah. “Sanatana Goswami, was formerly finance minister in the government of Nawab Hussein Shah.“ Srila Prabhupada in “Journey of Self-Discovery.” “Srila Rupa Goswami was the chief minister of the government of Nawab Hussain Shah.” 750419Let.G.L.Nanda. Shri Caitanya Mahaprabhu gave both of them the positions of most important ministers in His Sankirtan movement!

Additionally in Caitanya Caritamrta, Adi Lila 17.148, purport,  Srila Prabhupada writes the following about past relationship between Hindu and Moslem communities:

“In India, even in the interior villages, all the Hindu and Muslim communities used to live very peacefully by establishing a relationship between them. The young men called the elderly members of the village by the name chacha or kaka, ”uncle,” and men of the same age called each other dada, ”brother.” The relationship was very friendly. There were even invitations from Muslim houses to Hindu houses and from Hindu houses to Muslim houses. Both the Hindus and the Muslims accepted the invitations to go to one another’s houses to attend ceremonial functions. Even until fifty or sixty years ago, the relationship between Hindus and Muslims was very friendly, and there were no disturbances. We do not find any Hindu-Muslim riots in the history of India, even during the days of the Muslims’ rule over the country. Conflict between Hindus and Muslims was created by polluted politicians, especially foreign rulers, and thus the situation gradually became so degraded that India was divided into Hindustan and Pakistan. Fortunately, the remedy to unite not only the Hindus and Muslims but all communities and all nations can still be implemented by the Hare Krishna movement on the strong basic platform of love of Godhead.” (written in the nineteen seventies)

Little time later the shopping centre co-manager personally came and asked me to leave the premises. In such situations, it is regrettably my turn to surrender. But I suppose Krishna’s main purpose had been served by then. We did have a short discussion about book distribution conditions. Shopping centre managers are generally inclined to give us a paying book distribution table. Shop to shop distribution is generally not allowed. We prefer the shop to shop distribution, as the more dynamic form of book distribution. I assume that for quite some time the security guard could not find me, so he called his boss for help. I had seen the security guard looking for me and I am pretty confident he had seen me in my Vanaprastha saffron garb. He probably thought I was some sort of a shopping monk, but definitely not the rule breaking book seller he was looking for. But I kept distributing, as if everything were all right and I was fully authorized by the shopping centre management. That is a very important psychological point for the distributor. Actually, we are fully authorized by the Supreme Controller, the Supreme Owner and the Supreme Authority, Shri Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and this should be actualized by the fact that as agents for Shri Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, we should factually be allowed by worldly authorities to go wherever we judge it required to execute our book distribution preaching business, without any hindrances whatsoever, as is the case for sadhus in India. Of course, no need to say, we don’t intend to intrude into national security sensitive areas or such other facilities, unless special permission is granted by the relevant authorities. We are transplanting a very ancient, very respectable and simultaneously very wise culture, the Vedic culture!

All glories to Lord Caitanya’s Sankirtan Movement!

All glories to Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu Himself, as the most munificent avatar!