Eastern idol worshipers

Amarendra : Prabhupada was in Gainesville only for a short period of time and when we took him back to Jacksonville we had a kirtan in the airport. People started to gather around creating a sizeable crowd wanting to know what was going on. This was Jacksonville, Florida, a place where every time we did harinam, we would get arrested because of all the conservative Christian views. We were just heathen to them, these “Eastern idol worshipers” and so forth. I was sitting right at Prabhupada’s feet thinking, “I must be really special getting to sit right there at Prabhupada’s lotus feet.” But Hridayananda and Ananga Manjari, who was his wife at the time, saw the crowd and they went out and started distributing books. Prabhupada saw them do this and the entire time they were in the terminal he did not take his eyes off of them while they were handing out books. At that point I could see that if I wanted to please Prabhupada and to get his attention, it wasn’t to sing and chant but to distribute his books.