My sister - nineteen-year old, wheelchair-bound, muscular-dystrophic Madana-mohana-mohini dasi from Pune, India—really wanted to participate in book distribution during the marathon month, in December 2019, because it is so dear to Srila Prabhupada.
Mohini’s health not being so supportive, she made a compromise: “I’ll just go to a few neighboring apartments, maybe give out a couple of books, and see how my body responds.” Later in the month, after gathering courage for many days, she and I finally went out and distributed a few Bhagavad-gitas, and Mohini came back home with an infectious excitement. “I want to do more! Let’s go out again tomorrow.” Under normal circumstances, that would be too much: two back-to-back outings in her health condition—not a good idea! Eventually, practicality won, and we convinced her to wait a few days. But we were nearing the end of the month, and there weren’t a few days to wait.
With much hope and a strong desire, Mohini must have really been praying hard—because Krishna reciprocated: she got the idea to contact a doctor who had recently visited her for a checkup, to ask him to purchase 108 Gitas for distribution in his circles. She called him up, and he appreciated Mohini’s desire and said, “Yes, I’ll do whatever you say!”
That fueled the fire. It was the beginning of an exciting journey, and the end of her body’s control over her for over a week. One successful call led to another. For days, tirelessly, Mohini kept phoning people, until her throat started to give up. Inspired by her love for her daughter, our mother then joined to assist Mohini, and on her behalf we all came together to do what Mohini desired. We called up relatives, friends, doctors, teachers, colleagues, even decade-old acquaintances and proposed that they purchase Gitas for distribution in their circles, or sponsor Gitas for the underprivileged, which we would eventually go out and distribute in collaboration with the temple.
The response was overwhelming, making Mohini so transcendental, so happy, that she just kept smiling and kept increasing her target—from 108 to 500 to 1,000 to 1,500 to 3,100. She wouldn’t have dreamed of this when she started, but she kept aiming for more and more, and in under two weeks we had sponsors and orders for 3,101 Gitas.
I say that Krishna reciprocated, because the first person we called up, the doctor, was a special instrument, a hope-giving, desire-fueling instrument of Srila Prabhupada’s, who helped Mohini think big.
Mohini paid an intense price on the bodily level for days to come, but what price is that? Our bodies, minds, and words belong to Srila Prabhupada, and Mohini believes, “I’d rather die on the battlefield than sit back home and relax.”
Recently, on prize-distribution day, we found that Mohini turned out to be the number-one individual female book distributor in Pune, second overall in all of Pune only to our temple president, HG Radheshyam Prabhu! While receiving the certificate from HH Gopal Krishna Maharaja, she addressed the Pune congregation, shared some extraordinary achievements from ISKCON’s early days, and said, “With the mercy of the guru-parampara in ISKCON, nothing is impossible!”
Srila Prabhupada’s book distribution marathon ki jaya!
Srila Prabhupada’s loving compassion ki jaya!
Srila Prabhupada’s mercy and empowerment ki jaya!
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