Akula, “the Shark,” on sankirtan.
A story from some years ago in Russia, as told by Gautama Rishi Prabhu.
You know how Sanskrit names sometimes sound funny in our languages? So this Gautama Rishi went on sankirtana with a friend called Akula Das. Akula means “shark” in Russian. Not “sounds like” but literally means shark. For our English speakers, internet says that Akula class attack submarines make lion’s share of Soviet/Russia’s nuclear submarine force. “Akula” is a tough-sounding name, for sure.
So Gautama and Akula go on sankirtana, door to door in a huge apartment block somewhere in Nizhniy Novogord. “Babushkas” outside warned them that there are mafia bandits living on the top floor but by the time they got up there they forgot all about it. They are high on sankirtana now, Akula is beaming with extreme confidence, feeling like nothing can stop him and Lord Caitanya’s mercy. They bang on the door and a bare chested man with a machine gun in his hands opens it. Not an “assault rifle” and not an AK-47, but a machine gun which weighs 10 kg and is over a meter long. He jabs Gautama in the stomach with the barrel and barks: “Who are you?” Gautama immediately remembers the warning and melts into silent prayers to Lord Nrisimha but Akula, without missing a beat, shouts back “I am Akula!”
“Shark” is not a name mothers give to their children and so only a fellow bandit, backed up by his bosses and his gang, would dare to announce himself like that, so the man at the door is taken aback. “Okay, come inside”. Devotees are led into the main room and it’s a sight of a huge feast with twenty or so people sitting around the table. Vodka bottles, thick clouds of smoke – you get the picture.
“Akula is here, he wants to talk,” – devotees are introduced.
“What does Akula want?” – the boss rises up to the challenge.
What helps is that devotees are dressed in black leather jackets which, I believe, is an acceptable bandit uniform all over the world, so they are taken seriously – who knows who they are and who they represent?
“Do you know what happens to you when you die?” begins Akula, his eyes shining with excitement of sankirtana, and he had a golden tooth as well.
“Do you know what kind of death awaits you and what will happen to you afterwards?” continues Akula, not skipping a beat.
Dead silence around the room. Akula means business. This is it, the moment that defines whether you live or die. Hands are reaching for guns and Gautama hears clicks as guns get loaded.
“What’s your answer?” – demands Akula. “Cat got your tongue?”
Two guys without guns are challenging twenty heavily armed bandits in such a brazen way? This leads to questions:
“Are you from Moscow? No one local would dare talk like that.”
“Yes, from Moscow,” Akula continues (not true, but, you know – sankirtana), and beams a huge smile at them. “We have a message from Caitanya Mahaprabhu for you, it’s right here, in our bags.”
Bandits’ faces go white with terror – they think there are explosives there and these two crazy Moscovites are ready to blow the whole building up. Silence falls again.
Akula puts his hand in the bag and slowly takes out Bhagavad Gita – a book – “Everything is in there,” he announces.
The boss takes the book in his hands, Akula opens up illustrations and starts preaching as usual. Everyone realizes that even though these guys have a lot of spunk they are not threatening and, moreover, they really mean business about this death thing. They want to know how it gives them so much strength and they respect that. They ended up buying twenty books.
Akula is on a roll, he wants to continue with his preaching but Gautama gestures at him to round it up and leave, and eventually physically pulls him out before situation turns for the worse. They leave the apartment.
Once outside, Akula unloads on Gautama: “Why did you stop me in the middle of my preaching? Why are you obstructing sankirtana?”
Turns out Akula didn’t even notice guns in the room, thought it was a birthday party, and was totally oblivious to danger.
The picture below is from many years later, he was called Ananga Mohan then. He died in a car crash together with two other sankirtana devotees in 2010 so it’s a ten year anniversary now. They were driving to another city for Prabhupada marathon.