True story

[Guest guest]

This is about an ISKCON devotee police officer who fought the terroristsduring the siege of the Taj last year. Excerpted from Badrinarayan prabhu'slecture on 20th February 2009, at Mayapur:

Radhanath Maharaja told me a very blissful story the other day and he said Icould use it. So here goes! There was that Taj Hotel where the terroristsattacked. They were fighting in there for three days, complete carnage. The

terrorists had arranged in such a way that they would always be up higher.They would shoot from a lower vantage point down. Radhanath Maharaja told methis. They had all these grenades and they would throw the grenades and the

grenades would create so much smoke that if you were down looking up youcouldn’t see anything.Picture that you are one of these soldiers or police officers and you are inthis cloud of smoke and up above you there is this hail of bullets from the

terrorists shooting at you. One of those soldiers was one of our devotees.At one point, they were trying to chase these people through the hotel. Theyare trapped. The terrorist were throwing all these grenades, they are in a

complete cloud of smoke. They cannot see one foot in front of their face.They can’t see left, right or anything and this hail of bullets is beingfired at them. Just a wall of bullets coming at them.This devotee police officer, with two other police officers on either side,

he is in the middle, he actually was completely helpless. He couldn’t seeleft, right, he couldn’t see his colleagues. He remembered that he had onhis ring tone on his phone Nrsimhadeva prayers. He began playing the

Nrsimhadeva prayers and praying intently to Lord Nrsimhadeva, “Please I amabsolutely helpless. I am going to die. Save me, I'm in an absolutelyhopeless state.”When the shooting stopped, the smoke cleared, his friend to the right and

his friend to the left were completely killed, riddled with bullets and hewas unscathed. In front of him, which he couldn’t see at the time, was agiant pillar. And because they were shooting at him the pillar protected

him.He thought, “Just as Lord Nrsimhadev came out of the pillar to savePrahlada, He put a pillar here to save me!”Take advantage of this rare opportunity of this human form of life.  There are 8,400,000 different species of life through which we are rotating lifetime after lifetime. So getting a human body is not an every day affair. This most auspicious opportunity only comes after many millions of lifetimes in the lower species. Anyone who does not utilize their human life for self-realization is making the greatest mistake. When this happens it is the greatest tragedy, and unfortunately today this neglect of the human form has become the standard behavior for the entire human society. What can be done? We must first ourselves become solidly situated in Krishna consciousness and then do the highest welfare activity of spreading to everyone else all over the world.

Chant:Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare HareHare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama Hare Hare