Our family business!
Madhava Mohini and I were in Whangarei, New Zealand, for a week.
One fine evening, I met a man outside a K Mart in the Okara car park. He was just getting out of his car with his teenage son. He was big and bald, with tattoos, so I asked whether he was a monk or if it was just the haircut?
He laughed. I started presenting the books, and he agreed with everything. Keen to help us out with a donation, the man, Jimmy, sent his son to the ATM.
While his son was withdrawing cash, Jimmy told me that he is interested in the Vedas. I was surprised and asked him how he got interested. He said that he hangs out with some interesting people.
I showed him a copy of Searching for Vedic India, and he said, “I already got that book from someone in this car park a year ago.”
So this time Jimmy got a Bhagavad-gita and Hiding in Unnatural Happiness (HUH).
A few days later, Madhava and I were in Kaitaia. The streets were hot, dusty and noisy, with five-year-old kids performing Michael Jackson songs to raise funds for their school trip to Wellington, folks chatting outside a bakery, and a meat sizzle down the road. Madhava told me that it reminded her of India (minus the sausage sizzle).
While distributing in a car park, Madhava met a nice lady from Keri Keri doing her grocery shopping.
Shocked, Madhava asked her if she comes all the way to Kaitaia just to shop. The lady laughed and said “No, I work here, too.”
While Madhava was presenting the books, the lady said that actually she had just started to read the first page of the book HUH last evening and had then fallen asleep, but that she wanted to finish it because she thought it was a good book.
Madhava asked where she’d gotten the book, and she said her husband had received the books from a girl in an Okara car park a few days ago. This lady also was enthusiastic to give Madhava a donation and received a Bhagavad-gita.
Madhava described this to me later as we were driving home, and we realized that her husband was the Jimmy I had met. Husband, wife and teenage son all got a chance to do devotional service and now have a solid collection of Prabhupada’s books from different links in the chain of our family business.
Our family business, ki jaya!