Prabhupada's Vani Appearing in an Amazing Way
BY: VISNU MURTI & LAKSMIPRIYA
Jul 14, 2010 — BELGIUM (SUN) — Dear devotees, Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.
We have a wonderful story to share with you all. We have been to Paris last Sunday for the Ratha Yatra. It was so nice. But boy oh boy, are cities hellish places to live. We had an amazing experience though.
There is one lady from a bookshop (Ambika) that is always at Paris RY selling some esoteric French books and she also has sometimes some english second hand books. I slipped away from our booktable for a minute and went by her stand. Just imagine what I saw - the first volume of the original original SB set (printed in 1962 in India) that Prabhupada came to the USA with!!!
My jaw dropped. I took it into my hands and couldn't believe what I was
holding. So I asked her, if she is selling this book and she replied
confidently "yes". I looked at the back of the book and there
was a price - 7 euro!!! So I asked again. "Are you selling this book for 7
euro?" and she replied again "yes". My jaw dropped even more.
I ran back to our table and said to Visnu Murti like a mad woman: "you know
what? you know what? That lady there is selling the 1st part of the SB of
Srila Prabhupada.... for 7 euro!!! " and he screamed: "go and get it." So I
did and brought it back to our table and offered it to him. We were both
looking through it with great delight, and relishing our good fortune. Wow.
So beautiful.
But only for few minutes. .... :-) One very old friend of Visnu's came by
our table when we were looking at the book and we told him the whole story,
somewhat confident. He said jokingly: "So will you sell me the book for 21
euro? You get 3 times more for it like that, good profit for you!"
Visnu said "come over and talk to me" And thus they sat down and talked for
few minutes together, I could not hear what they were saying. When they got
up, Visnu exclaimed: "So I have to beg forgiveness from my wife now, but its
better to beg forgiveness than ask permission. :-) "
He explained that the devotee had just agreed to give us a donation of 1008
euro for Vanipedia in exchange for this book. Wow, what could say?
So, there it is. At least we held Srila Prabhupada's original Bhagavatam in
our hands for few moments. Who knows what is the path of that book, where it
came from and where it will continue to go, travelling by land, or sea, city
to city, country to country. Who knows. It has its own path and goes where
it wants to go. It has been travelling already for 48 years.
We went back to ask that lady, if she has some more books like that – but she didn't. I think she didn't even know what that book is all about. Who knows how it even got to her! So many mysteries. :)
I find this is a wonderful example of how Srila Prabhupada is directly
assisting us in the mission of building Vanipedia!!!! Lets see what his
next glorious intervention will be.!!!!!
Srila Prabhupada's book distribution ki jaya.
your servants
Visnu Murti & Laksmipriya
