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At the end of November we held an an istha ghosthi with the department leaders of our Swamibag temple in Dhaka/Bangladesh to prepare for the upcoming Prabhupada marathon. I appealed to everyone assembled to make some little extra endeavor for the marathon to distribute Prabhupada's books more widely, and we decided to read for a few minutes every morning after mangal artik from the wonderful book "The Nectar of Book Distribution" in order to help our devotees to cultivate Sankirtan consciousness.

I myself had promised to our two traveling Sankirtan parties to accompany them for some days. It would be nice for me to get out there and help to distribute some books, and I might be able to give some little inspiration to the devotees, demonstrating with my personal example that book distribution is indeed a very important service which is so pleasing to Srila Prabhupada.

We spent one week traveling from town to town, distributing Bhagavad Gita's.

In every place we could find congregational devotees or 'Krsna's friends' who eagerly welcomed us to stay overnight in their homes. Lilakanta Krsna Prabhu who is usually cooking for me had agreed to come along, ensuring that I would get my regular light and simple prasad without chili. Since book distribution is not firmly established throughout Bangladesh, the devotees of other yatra's don't mind us coming to their area to distribute. Infact they are even willing to take us to their congregational members and favorable people and introduce us, and we were selling lots of BG's to them. And at the same time they are learning the art of distributing books.

Fortunately Krsna was so kind to speak Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna during the Prabhupada marathon - this year Gita Jayanti falls on the 17th of December!

I simply can't take this to be a coincidence! Surely Krsna would have known already five thousand years ago that He would have to request Srila Prabhupada
to take birth in this world to spread the knowledge of BG all over the world, and He would have known that the Western world would be Christian at this time, and Prabhupada would establish the book marathon during the month of December to use the Xmas madness to distribute more books. So maybe therefore Krsna chose to speak BG during the time of December - so it would help the devotees in the Eastern world to distribute lots of books for the Prabhupada marathon....! And in this part of the world Gita Jayanti is indeed an excellent line for book distribution. We try to inspire people to not only buy one BG, but many in order to distribute them to friends, neighbors, collegues and customers. In this way they can get Krsna's and Prabhupada's mercy during this month of Gita Jayanti - by engaging in book distribution themselves. And it really works! Many people bought five or ten books, and one cloth merchant even agreed to buy 108 BG's - the "lucky number"!
In great jubilation we carried the boxes of BG's into his house, performed artik to one book, and afterwards I signed it with "Always chant Hare Krishna and be happy"! Everybody was very joyful and fully satisfied.

Some evenings the devotees had arranged little programs for us, which were centered around book distribution. We would start with tulasi puja and Gaur artik kirtan, then I would give a little speech about the importance of Srila Prabhupada's books, finally requesting everyone to come forward to buy some BG's and offering to sign the book with blessings. Some programs we sold fourty BG's within one hour!

The devotees had arranged for ten thousand BG's thinking this would be enough for the Bangladeshi yatra for the whole marathon. But after two weeks these ten thousand books were already distributed - not only by our Swamibag devotees, but also by other yatras, who eagerly followed our example. So more BG's had to be ordered from Mayapur. After three weeks our traveling Sankirtan devotees had distributed more than four thousand BG's - an average of
more than two hundred per day....! And of course they also distributed smaller books and sets of SB and CC.

And of course all the Swamibag departments also are distributing lots of books -  the exact scores are not even recorded. Our temple property is decorated with nice posters promoting book distribution - downloaded from Vaisnavaseva Prabhu's desiretree website. It helps to cultivate Sankirtan consciousness.

Who would have ever thought that Bangladesh, being a Muslim country is one of the best places for book distribution on this planet....!


Your servant, Devaki dd