The Adventures of Aisvarya Prabhu continue
On another occasion we somehow or other found ourselves on a trading room floor with a hundred or so people on telephones talking share prices, waiting for their fortune to pop up on one of the many TV screens that adorned one wall, shouting what I suppose were numbers to eagerly receptive ears, and often curiously glancing over at two oddly dressed westerners gallivanting around in their otherwise normal lives.
Above and beyond the call of duty, many people in this part of the world will not only ignore you if they don't want to say "No", but will also pretend you are not there and hope you will go away if they don't understand you. Not easy if the person you are trying to ignore looks like a monk and you're supposed to respect them. If it gets too personal to handle then security is called. These guys can be heavy and are best dealt with in very small doses. In this case we were lucky that the boss was called instead.
Mr. Su was a gentleman in his mature years. He came out of his office and greeted me as if I was a long lost friend. He then put his arm around my shoulders and proceeded to escort me to his plush office out of the purview of his now very attentive staff.
When comfortably seated with my cup of hot water I presented Mr. Su with a Bhagavad-Gita and told him how we are approaching the leaders of society with this very important spiritual message. I elaborated; "Leaders are very influential and can choose to do either so much good or so much bad for society at large". At this point Mahatma was escorted in by Mr. Su's secretary and was also given a sofa of honor along with a cup of hot water. I then continued to explain to Mr. Su, "Whatever a leader does, everyone else will follow. So as a leader you have a grave responsibility to your staff and society at large." I also added some basic philosophy about the existence of the soul and that without spiritual values nothing is of value.
Mr. Su then surprised me. He told me that everything that he had become, and that he owned, was due to his faith in spirit and that without spirit he had nothing. At least he had a little vision even though he had received the best of spiritually blinding gifts – the position of a big Lau ban (boss), with a big office and not much work to do. So this little understanding along with a decent culture shined through as he happily responded by taking the books. He then respectfully escorted us out, chatting politely with us as we past his staff, now jaws agape.
