In2-MeC

ISKCON Juhu, Mumbai 15 April 2003

In yesterday's entry to this journal, I expressed some concern that my writings here were getting logjammed because Madhu Puri Prabhu, who is in Bhubaneshwar, was not answering his email. At last I got a letter from him. He tells me it is extremely hot there; thus he's been having trouble to move about in the daylight hours. I pray to Krishna that He protects Madhu Puri from health problems caused by the burning Indian summer sun. Heat stroke is very disabling.

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I was ill yesterday with fever and exhaustion, and this sickness continues today. It's not from the heat, because it does not get extremely hot here in Mumbai. Year-round this city gets fresh breezes from the Arabian Sea, so whether in summer or winter the temperature is tolerable. Anyway, I've been taking medicine and resting a lot. I should be back in action tomorrow.

So things have been pretty quiet for me in the last 24 hours. Before that, since my arrival in Juhu on the 8th, I was quite busy. Class every day, sometimes twice a day, a program at a devotee family's house. I did a couple days of shopping here too. I've been downsizing my altar paraphernalia. Previously I'd been carrying with me rather large pots and plates for my puja; most of that is now replaced with much smaller, lighter items. I got a wood-and-brass Sudarshan throne for the Jagannatha-Sudharshan shilas, and a brass throne for Giriraja, Sri Govardhana-shila. Giriraja's new throne looks like a little temple with arched windows all around and a dome on top. I also purchased a couple more 40-gigabyte external hard drives for my computer.

In Mumbai and Delhi you can pick up quite cheaply good compact external drives. I have five of these now, adding up to 200 gigabytes memory more than the 20 gigabytes built into my laptop. These five drives fit very easily into my computer carry-bag.

The advantage of external hard drives is that I save CD material to them: for example, Srila Prabhupada's audio and video recordings and so much other ISKCON nectar that is available on CDs these days. At first I was collecting the CDs, but that quickly became cumbersome. I was dragging around a shoulder bag full of them that was getting heavier and heavier the more CDs I acquired.

It was Madhu Puri Prabhu who got me onto the method of storing CD data to external hard drives. You can transfer the data of about 60 CDs to one of these drives which is the size of (sorry for the comparison) a pack of cigarettes. The 40-gigabyte drive is convenient because it does not need a separate power supply; you just connect it to the USB port of the laptop and it runs off your computer's power. There are larger drives available; I've seen an 80-gigabyte drive in one shop and I've heard you can get up to 120. But these are much more expensive and need their own power adaptors.

Another nice thing Madhu Puri introduced me to is digital photography of books. You photograph the pages of a book to a memory card that can be inserted into a computer. Then with a program called Adobe Photoshop you can compress the data of these photos into what are known as .gif files. If this is done well, the .gif files of the pages are easier to read than the original photographs, because the compression takes out unnecessary color. You see, to read a page, you really only require black and white. A raw photo of a book page includes so many subtle shades of colors. The .gif compression takes away all the unnecessary stuff and leaves you with basically just the letters of the book. There is a further process by which you can turn those letters into computer characters; then you could put the photoed books into the Vedabase, for example, or some other folio-type program. But that is a lot of work. Photographing and compressing books doesn't take too much time if you know what you are doing. Then you can read the books on the computer screen, page by page, with a program called ACDSee.

In Mayapur, Madhu Puri and I did a marathon of photoing and compressing about 50 books (new ISKCON-related publications, plus other books of Vedic studies, and academic texts about philosophy, science, psychology, etc.). Previously I used to carry around so many books with me, but now I can put them all on my computer.

I am not really into all the complexities of computer technology. I am just mentioning these things because they can be of use to devotees who would find it convenient to have a lightweight, portable library of a great deal of audio, video and printed material.

Madhu Puri Prabhu was a great help to me during this visit of mine to India. If he hadn't been here with me, this In2-MeC journal could not have happened as it did. Madhu Puri Prabhu ki jaya!!!

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Brajahari Prabhu just came to see me as I was writing this. He is the temple manager here at ISKCON Juhu. Very, very, nice brahmacari. He is on his way to an ISKCON manager's meeting in Tirupati and just wanted to say goodbye. He requested that I stay in Juhu three months every year! Well, I think that won't be possible; but I do want to visit this beautiful Radha-Rasabihari Mandira every time I come to India.

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I was too busy in Mayapur doing the books-to-computer marathon and writing the Transcendental Psychology essays to report here about the c e n t i p e d e s ! ! ! (Oooh!)

My kutir in Tarunpur became a home to these creatures. Those of you readers who don't speak English as a first language may not know what a centipede is. It is what scientists call an arthropod, which is a fancy word for "bug." The name centipede comes from the Latin centipeda, meaning "100 feet." They are long and run rapidly across the ground on many legs with a snake-like movement of their whole body.

In India centipedes are considered a kind of vrscika or scorpion. They don't look like scorpions, but they do have poison fangs that inflict a painful bite if the centipede is a big one. So because centipedes are vrscikas, we have to kill them. Srila Prabhupada explained in 1968:

So once I saw in our Mayapur, Lord Caitanya's birthplace, so a snake was going, a black snake with... In Bengal there are many snakes. So my Guru Maharaja was on the upstair and everyone asked the permission whether this should be killed. He said immediately, "Yes. He should be killed." So at that time I thought that "How Guru Maharaja ordered for killing the snake?" Then, after so many years, when I began to read Bhagavatam and came to this passage, Prahlada Maharaja assertion, modeta sadhur api vrscika sarpa hatya, then I thought that "My Guru Maharaja did right thing." Here also, modeta. Even a sadhu. Then why a sadhu is pleased when a sarpa, a scorpion, or snake is killed? The reason is that these two kinds of creatures, they bite innocent persons without any fault. Without any fault.

I saw about 5 centipedes during my month and a half stay in Tarunpur. I killed 4 and managed to cut one in half with a small knife before it escaped. These things are so attached to the body that when I cut it in half, both halves ran in different direction. I did kill the back half, but the front half, with the head, escaped.

One morning during puja, when two of Murari Gupta's sons were with me watching me worship my shilas, the boys saw a centipede crawl up my clothing. Right in the middle of puja! I had to stop everything and kill the little rascal.

That one and three others (including the one I cut in half) were "little," not more than 5 centimeters long. But another one, the fifth, was h u g e !

Early one morning, just after I turned on the light to get up from rest, I felt something run across my foot. I looked down. Though I did see for an instant something disappear into the darkness, I wasn't sure what it was. I thought it might be a lizard, one of those geckos that the Bengalis call tikki-tikki because of the clicking sound they make. But in the brief instant I saw the thing, I noted that it did not look like a lizard. It crossed my mind it might be a centipede, but I did not want to believe that. Because from what I did see of it in the dark, if it was a centipede, then it was a big one!

Anyway, whatever it was, it had vanished. I rolled up my bedding from the floor and set about getting the kutir in order before going to take a shower. I gradually noticed that my foot, over which the thing had run, was feeling a little itchy. When centipedes are really big, the touch of their feet on human skin causes an itch. In some cases their feet leave a row of red dots across skin. But as my foot was not itching bad, not even as bad as a mosquito bite, I didn't mind it.

Then suddenly I saw it. It was on the straw mat that covers the central area of the kutir, and was right in front of my shila altar. The thing was the color of a brick, sort of brown-red. And it was as big and as fat as a fountain pen. Fifteen centimeters long!

It was nightmarish to see. Very disturbing to the mind. Frightening, yes, but even worse, disgusting in a very sinister way. It loitered in one place but sort of stretched and unstretched itself with a lazy motion.

I could have just smashed the thing, but I didn't want to make a big mess that I would have clean up before doing puja; plus I wanted to show the body to Murari Gupta Prabhu. So I took a flashlight and used the back end of it to crush the centipede's head. The little monster writhed around for a second and then strained backwards, trying to pull its head out from under the flashlight.

I took my small knife and cut its head off.

Now, what kind of creature can still see and think without a head?

I found out that a centipede can.

After the head was gone, the thing was free from the flashlight. It started moving directly toward me, as if to attack. Centipedes are aggressive if provoked. And this one was really mad now. But it had no head! I could understand at that moment how demonic these creatures are. Their predatory life force is so strong that they have a kind of mystic power that over-rides their physical senses.

Still not wanting to smash the thing into a big bloody mess on my straw floor mat, still wanting to preserve the body to show Murari, I started stabbing it along its "spine" with the knife blade. It kept coming after me. Finally after ten stabs it stopped, but it was still not dead. It just couldn't walk any more. I suppose stabbing it like that damaged its central nervous system. Its legs stopped working. But it was still trying to drag itself in my direction. I carefully wrapped it up in a piece of tissue paper and took to over to Murari's house to show him. But he had already seen such big centipedes before, and since he had begun his morning puja of his Sri Sri Gaura-Nitai Deities, he did not want interrupt his spiritual meditations to look at such a horrible beast from hell.

These creatures have an aura about them that deeply disturbs the mind. I was upset for days after that. Even now, writing this down, I get a creepy feeling inside.

I hope reading this didn't disturb you too much. But it is something I just had to put into my journal.

I hope next year the centipedes will have moved out. Last year the kutir was home to a colony of red ants. This year there were very few ants; but for the first time, there were centipedes.

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