The Fish and the walrus: from Aisvarya das
Vijaya Prabhu has been very persuasive in encouraging me to write something on this forum for the pleasure of the Vaisnavas. My appreciation and respect for Vijaya Prabhu is very deep and now that he has gone global – diligently working to inspire, motivate and increase sankirtan even in the farthest reaches of our negativity and indifference to the Lord’s mission – my respect for him increases unlimitedly. Especially since he's doing it not in the best of health (I hope he doesn’t edit this out).
So now I have to remember something special that happened. Actually it’s all very special. I’ve had many days distributing books where nothing seemingly out of the ordinary occurred. You get out there, a few people take books, a few don’t, a couple of disgruntled folk give you some grief, some commend you, someone walks by who bought a book from you the other day and gives the usual excuses for not reading it, a couple of crazies, some new agies, the list goes on. But what has really happened out there on days like this? Have we been unsuccessful in clinching a business deal with Krsna… like, I do this for You and You give me some bliss!? Or have we actually achieved the goal of life… pure unmotivated unconditional devotional service? More than likely it’s somewhere between the two but at least we made some progress. And we make even more progress if we go out and try again.
This world’s a circus! Just go out and look at it. Everyone’s out to make it big and most have realized that it’s better to be a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big one. Which reminds me of the Chinese businessman’s office I walked into the other day. I opened the door and was confronted with a fish tank the size of a large television set containing a live fish the size of another large television set. The poor thing could only sit there and watch the world go by for it couldn’t move an inch. And when I walked around it into the small office, the boss was sitting big at his large desk counting, not big $100 bills, but small $20 bills. He was too big to take a small book and too small to be magnanimous but the parody stuck in my mind.
Another act, James Bond is big in the East. I met an undercover policeman who was on his way to stake out a factory illegally manufacturing guns. The dangerous nature of his work made it very easy to convince him to take a book and he was truly thankful. So was I as I normally avoid police. Still he didn’t seem fully satisfied. Finally he let it slip that he needed to know my birthplace. “Oh Engwand, they are all gentlemen there. Jame’ Bon’ is coo (cool) too.” He then proceeded to tell me a dirty joke about why Mr Bond is called 007. I’ll spare you the details as it lost a great deal in the translation. The life of a book distributor is thwart with all kinds of dangers.
Like I said, I normally avoid police for a reason. Tara Prabhu and I found ourselves in a prison cell for trying to distribute books in the heart of Athens last year. It’s a long story that begins with a very irate and fanatical Orthodox Christian cop with an attitude. He escorted us off the street and straight into the local police station where we were searched for incriminating materials and then taken to the big chief.
In the 1930s a law was passed in Greece giving two-year prison sentences to anyone trying to proselytize anyone Greek Orthodox. After Greece joined the European Union, the Jehovah Witnesses took the country to the European Court and had that law revoked. But Greece being Greece and if you know Greeks you’ll know that *they* know best in all circumstances.
The chief of police looked uncannily like a walrus, king of big fat squelchy things that lounge about on beaches. When we entered the room he sat back in his chair, that bitterly complained by creaking loudly. He proceeded to reveal his mind to us in a deliberately slow and menacing tone:
“This is Greece. We are Orthodox here. I know what you are doing. You cannot do this here. We do not want you to do this. Do you understand?”
After repeating these last few statements in various combinations to increase the pleasure he felt in being the supreme authority he looked over at the edge of his desk where Srila Prabhupada’s confiscated books were stacked. He was truly enjoying himself now. Actually he didn’t care about what we were doing but because that one officer wanted us hung, drawn and quartered and because he had to keep the camaraderie of the station intact he had to do this. But at the same time, in true Greek fashion, he made sure that he was going to enjoy it intensely.
“Have you taken bath (swam in the sea) yet?” he asked us. We had just arrived the day before so we replied that we hadn’t. He reprimanded us, “You have come to Greece and you haven’t taken bath? Let me tell you what to do. You take these books with you and you go to the sea. You then take your bath and when you come out you give these books to the people laying on the beach so that they can put them over their eyes to block the sun while they sleep.”
We took that as approval to continue distributing.
He then told us to wait a while so that our passports could be checked and then we were free to go. But our original captor was not going to let us off so lightly. He made sure that we were going to wait a long time for him to slowly check the passports, and that we were going to wait for him while locked up in a cell with a few other unfortunates.
What makes this story tellable is that the officer who opened and shut the cell door to let different people in and out, at one point opened up and asked me to come over. He then asked me in a hushed tone if he could look into one of Srila Prabhupada’s books. I gave him an Isopanisad, he quickly tucked it into his inside pocket and locked us back in again. Later, when we were released, he gave me back the book and thanked me. As we left everyone gave us a smile: Everyone except one.
The epilogue is that we did go to the beach and we did give books to beach goers but not to walruses.
I’ll keep this e-mail short and sweet as I don’t have much in the way of report-worthy material. Then again, every book is a little bit of the spiritual world reaching out so it’s all worthy.
Your Servant
Aisvarya dasa
