Sankirtan Story By Titiksava Karunika Das
We had rented a house in Santa Cruz, CA. About 6 or 7 Brahmacaris trying to start a preaching center. I guess it was about 1981. Some of us were doing prasadam distribution and some were selling incense. I was one of the guys selling incense. I remember it was pretty tough and usually I couldn’t collect much. One day I approached a young couple and tried to distribute something. You know the line “we’re passing these out today and just asking a donation” The man said “could you use a car”? I said “sure” so he gave me his phone number and later that day I went over to his house and he signed over a Rambler Sedan. Not the best car, but it ran, and we got a good few miles out of it before we gave it to the matajis back at the temple in Berkeley. Certainly not bad for a stick of incense. It burned a lot of oil though, and it wasn’t long till we heard that the girls had neglected to put any oil in it and it broke down. Another time I was dropped off in down town Santa Cruz with another devotee on the Pacific Street Mall. Dhruva was his name. He was a small, thin Italian lad wearing his dhoti, kurta and tilak. I was in my karmis. He was distributing cookies which we had made earlier that morning. He had a little hand cart, you know the kind, like a little table on wheels.
So I had gotten out of the van and was sitting on one of the planter boxes on the side walk there and Dhruva was pushing his little prasadam stand onto the mall when this skinny old man stands right in front of his table blocking his way and says in a nasty tone of voice “you can’t do this here!” Dhruva says “yes we can we have our permit” So then Dhruva starts to push his cart and when the old man sees his determination he grabs the cart and shoves it back bumping it into Dhruva saying again “no you can’t ! You can’t do this here!”. Well as I mentioned Dhruva’s an Italian and not without temper so he pushes the cart back into this guy. Now the guy gets angrier, comes out from behind the cart steps toward Dhruva and gives him a hard push with both hands right in the chest.
So I’m sitting there on the planter box watching all this and at this point I get up and yell at this guy “Hey don’t be pushing my friend”! So the guy looks at me then looks at Dhruva and says “I know how to deal with you punks”, pulls out a small hand gun and points it right at my chest and pulls the trigger. Bham! I couldn’t have been more than 8 feet away. It was a small gun, a small caliber Staurday Night Special and at first I thought it was a blank gun. Then he fired again. Bham! By this time I had instinctively turned sideways to provide a more difficult target. Wham! I felt something hit me in the shoulder. Well I had heard before that blank guns use a wad of paper instead of a bullet and I was thinking wow that hit pretty hard for a piece of paper so I pulled open my shirt, looked down and saw this blood coming out. Well I freaked out. About the last thing on my mind was Krishna. I started yelling. “Hey that guy shot me! That guy shot me”! If I would have left my body who knows where I would have ended up. Not with Krishna that’s for sure. The question is, what happened to the first shot? Answer: Krishna’s mercy.
At this point the guy puts the gun back in his pocket, turns around and starts walking quickly away. Some passer byers set me down on the planter box and try to get me to calm down, putting a handkerchief on the wound, all the while I am still yelling “that guy shot me”! So he gets about 75 feet away when this Police lady comes around the corner. She has her gun drawn. It was one of thoese big ol’ ones, 57 caliber, holding it with both hands and has this Wide-Eagle stance and yells as loud as she can “drop your weapon!” I tell you it was classic. Right out of the movies. But it was real. Probably never been more scared in her life. Anyway he throws down his gun and they arrest him and take him away.
I get taken away by ambulance. Full treatment. Felt pretty important. Then they had me in the hospital and had to clean out the wound. Well it really wasn’t anything at all. The bullet went in the shoulder and passed right out again without even hitting a bone. Lucky me. But what was the worst was when they started shoving antiseptic in the hole with Qtips. That hurt way worse that the actual bullet.
Well I went to court a couple of times. It turns out the guy had already been convicted of stabbing someone in the throat with a fork. Obviously a nut case. I moved out of the area and it was too far away and too much trouble to make the court cases anymore, after all “I was on a mission from God”. So he’s probably still at large. Ya gotta feel sorry for a guy like that. He definitely should have stolen some cookies instead.
Titiksava Karunika Das
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