Visnujana Maharaja In New Orleans

(New Orleans 1974)

Arriving at the temple we were warned by the temple president, Nityananda Prabhu, not to park in the front. Some local pranksters had been harassing the temple by driving by and throwing eggs etc. Visnujana decided to go ahead and park in the front anyway. We were having the evening arati when I heard a thud on the side of the bus. Sticking my head out the window to take a look I saw the car driving away. They had plastered the side of the bus with eggs. Yuk! Visnujana told me to go up the block and yell if I saw the same car come back. He told everyone else to find the biggest rocks etc. they could find and line up along the street.

About 5 minutes later the car jam packed with teenagers came by. I yelled out that was the one and the devotees began to batter the new car with whatever they could get their hands on. The car slowed to about 5 miles per hour and more and more devotees converged on them. Sanjaya came from behind a big tree in the middle of the road and dropped the huge rock onto the car. Visnujana had some kind of tree trunk and he proceeded to dent every side of the car. The prankters were given some of their own medicine. They sped off. We all reboarded the Bus and finished the arati. Visnujana said, "Just see! Arati was not disturbed!" We all got a kick out of that. The bus driver stood guard all night but they never came back. Even when we called back to the temple some months later to ask about it the temple president said that they havn't had any problems since that night and thanked us for coming.

Those kind of events were actually very rare. Most of our days were spent blissfully chanting the Holy Names of the Lord. Having a bit of the Ksatriya spirit we enjoyed confronting Maya once in awhile.