GNAB: The Pleasant Surprises of Door-to-Door Book Distribution
One of the highlights of last Saturday’s door-to-door distribution was our entry into one gated apartment complex in San Jose. As soon as we had managed to enter this complex (thanks to an outgoing resident opening up the gates), the Manager had spotted us and had radioed his crew, patrolling in Golf carts, that he had seen us walk in. His instruction to his crew would be predictable: “inform them (i.e. us) that ours is a private-gated community and they (i.e. we) are not welcome as solicitors”.
I was with a couple of devotees and had just presented a book pack and finished preaching to a homeowner who had gone inside to fetch a donation. Thereupon, as if from nowhere, one member of the maintenance crew appeared in front of the homeowner’s door to remind me that his manager had spotted us and we were not to solicit anything on their premises.
“What are you soliciting?” he inquired. ‘Nothing really’, I replied, ‘just showing this eager householder a Bhagavad Gita’. “What’s that?” he asked. ‘It’s a text on Vedism’ I replied ‘that shows you how to free yourself from the pangs of suffering in this material world’. “Please show me how?” he said and I started flipping through the pages to illustrate my point with some shlokas and pictures.
“Interesting” he quipped, “my girl friend the other day was talking to me about something just like that, some Vedic science info she had come across the internet and wanted me to look into it. Now that you tell me about this, I think I would like to have this book” he remarked. Upon hearing those unexpected words, I placed the Gita in his hand saying ‘it’s yours to keep for the asking, show it to your girl friend too”. He was pleased to take the book and hurriedly squatted to his Golf cart. “Meet me at the gate in 10 minutes” he said “and I’ll write you a check for it”. ‘OK’ I replied, nodding my head as he whisked away.
Soon thereafter, devotees had reassembled. They knew we had been warned and may be asked anytime to leave the complex. Krishna Purshottama das (Sreekanth Prabhu) was there and I conferred with him. It was decided we would continue until they gave us another warning or physically escorted us to the gate. We went by our merry way. Within a few minutes I got a call from KPD that he had managed to sell a Bhagavad Gita to the facility manager. What? Yes, KPD had knocked on one door that turned out to be the manager’s residence and presented him with a Gita. The manager happily took it and also gave a donation. This was a surprising turn of events. Within 15 minutes we had managed to convince two of the main gatekeepers that we were there to do something useful. Having earned a license to distribute books we continued door-to-door with renewed energy and distributed many books of transcendental literature on that memorable afternoon.
Narasimha Chaturdasi MSF ki Jaya
Ys
Raxit Jariwala
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