Saturday 30 May 2015

Fri, May 8th 2015

Friday, May 8th, 2015
USA/West Virginia

This Reading Riding But Not Walking

The customs people at the US border were pleasant enough.  Our bus from Parkinson’s bus company aside from one side of the AC being not in operation.  It got a bit stifling at times during this unusual 30 degree Celsius weather for this time of year.  It was the great company that I had that compensated for the lack of cool, breathable air, on this long ride. 

My highlight on the bus ride which held 30 passengers was reading to the group at picnic time.  I had pulled out of my bag the book, ‘Prabhupada’, and being that not all passengers, let’s say, pilgrims, knew too much about this sadhu (holy man), I thought to read and inform and even delight the group.  They were enjoying samosas and wraps with hummus.  The author, Satsvarupa Goswami, shows as a subtitle to the book, ‘He Built a House in Which the Whole World Could Live’.  Now that it’s fifty years since this sadhu, our guru, Prabhupada, first came to the US with his mission, I thought it appropriate to read a section where Sally Agarwal recalls hosting him in her home town of Butler, Pennsylvania.

The excerpt from Sally:

“Our fun was to show him what we knew of America, and he had never seen such things.  It was such fun to take him to the supermarket.  He loved opening the package of okra, or frozen beans, and he didn’t have to clean them and cut them and do all those things.  He opened the freezer every day and just choose his items.  It was fun to watch him.  He sat on the couch while I swept with the vacuum cleaner, and he was so interested in that, and we talked for a long time about that.  So every day, he’d have this big feast (cooked) and everything, was great fun.”

May the Source be with you!

1 km

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