A fair go – Story
The devotees’ excitement grew as the time for the Ratha-yatra parade drew
near.
It was the culmination of months of careful organisation and hard labour. It was also a Ratha-yatra that almost didn’t happen.
Compared with the near-catastrophe of fire a few days earlier, far more serious obstacles had been raised by the Melbourne City Council.
Despite an application being lodged for the parade months in advance, permission had been denied only one week before the event. Melbourne officials were determined to block the festival.
Madhudvisa had applied to appeal the denial, and an appeal was granted. So, only days before the parade, Madhudvisa, with freshly shaved head, tilaka, and dressed in full sannyasa garb, arrived at the luxuriantly appointed Council chambers of the Melbourne Town Hall.
Madhudvisa: When I arrived at the board room the mood was immediately
inimical. The first thing I saw were piles of paperwork, literally heaped up
on the desk. These were the hundreds and hundreds of unpaid fines from years of intense battling with the council. It was ironic. Here I was, petitioning the same people whose whole bureaucratic system had been totally disregarded and clogged by us, to grant permission for our
parade.
The chances looked very slim indeed. I sat down at the back of the room chanting softly on my beads.
As I expected, they were intransigent.
“Tell us why we should co-operate with you,” they argued.
“You Hare Krsnas haven’t co-operated with us at all. You have flaunted our authority. In fact, you have been totally unco-operative. Tell us, Mr. Swami, why should we let you have this parade? You’ve collected money without a licence, you’ve distributed books without permits, you’ve been a nuisance, you’ve blocked the sidewalk, you’ve jay-walked, you haven’t paid your parking tickets, you’ve been occupying the Little Lonsdale Street place without proper registration ”
As they went on, I became almost hopeless.
What to do? I started praying:
“Krsna — You’re in the heart of all these council men. If you want us to have a Ratha-yatra festival, then please change their hearts.”
As the council spokesman kept talking I kept praying. “Krsna, You’re in my heart too. Please let me say the right thing.”
Finally the man concluded his presentation.
“Now, Mr. Swami, what do you have to say? Stand up.”
I stood and said: “Everything you say is true. We have been neglectful in the
past, and there has been great difficulty with our preaching tactics, but we
are trying to improve. As far as the Ratha parade is concerned, I know you
have a lot of apprehensions about it, but we’re simply asking you one thing
well. We’re asking you to ‘give us a fair go’.”
That’s all I said. “Give us a fair go.”
Somehow or other, it struck a chord.
In Australia, this was a significant request. No-one would deny giving someone else a ‘fair go’.
They discussed amongst themselves, and then the spokesman stood.
“All right, Mr. Swami, we’ll give you a fair go.”
And that was it. We got the permit.
The permission, however, had been conditional; the conditions were so strict, in fact, that most devotees guessed that the council presumed they would be unable to meet them in such short notice.
Hydraulic brakes had to be installed on all three carts, and be fully tested by the police; each of the massive wheels would have to be rubber-clad to avoid damaging the road; and a more effective steering system had to built into each cart. All this — in a few days!
Madhudvisa: So the night before the festival, we had to take the carts out at
midnight, and we had to park them on the top of an extremely steep road in
Carlton, and then we had to pull them downhill with the brakes on. The brakes had to be so effective that even pulling the carts down the hill wouldn’t make the brakes budge. We had policemen all dressed up in overalls with flashlights, looking at the carts, checking the hydraulics to make sure everything was all right, checking the steering. It was a huge automotive inspection at midnight, and somehow or other, they passed everything.
(From “The Great Transcendental Adventure” by HG Kurma Prabhu)
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