Another Avenue for Book Distribution – Inside our House
By Rupa Raghunatha das
In Sydney, I mainly do book distribution on the street. We are also very fortunate to have a strong team of six Devamrita Swamis bramacaris opening the storehouse of love of God on the streets of hundreds of suburbs in Sydney.
Since I took to the Grhasta asram, I have found another avenue for book distribution – inside our house. We set up a shop in the foyer with mainly books but other paraphenalia also. So we do home programs and some people buy books during the programs. But some of the most enlivening experiences are when people come to do some work for us or people knock on our door to sell us things. We had a plumber come to do some work. He ended up sitting down for a full meal of prasadam and bought a Gita and cookbook for $50. He also told us about these South American guys who install Pink Bat installation in the roof to give extra cooling in summer and heating in winter. He said they do it for free as the government offers this benefit to people so they use less air conditioning etc. So I called them up. They came around a few days later and installed the insulation. I cooked a simple lunch of Upma, tomato chutney, strawberry lassi, halava and custard. We all sat on the back lawn and took lunch prasadam. They all loved the prasadam and one man in particular was asking a lot of questions about our philosophy. He out of the four men asked for seconds and thirds of prasadam! They went back to work and when finishing, this one man asked if he could stay and ask some questions. We sat down in the shop and he asked very intelligent questions for 1 or 2 hours. He ended up buying a variety of books and gave $60.
Sometime later we were preparing for the birth of a child. We planned to do a home birth so we got in touch with a professional midwife who has been doing homebirths for 20 years. On the day she came with her assistant. The birth went well and we were chanting Hare Krsna along with Prabhpada on a CD. We also fed the midwifes prasadam on the day. After the birth the midwife came for a visit and she took a keen interest in the books. She was eagerly looking over them in the shop and ended up getting $100 worth of books! The other midwife did not get any books then, but I met her on the street in her home town some weeks later and she purchased a Bhagavad Gita.
Also we have had a number of people knocking on our door to sell us something. Most of them walk away with a book and some of them are happy to sit down and take prasadam with us. So I encourage all Grhastas to keep a good stock of books in your house because you don’t know who will knock on your door and you can have them walk away with the supreme benefit; Krsna conciousness, through Srila Prabhupada’s books.
Your servant, Rupa Raghunatha das
