Govinda's Gifts

Hare Krsna! Here is another interesting incident.

It was sometime in 1994. When we had moved our temple premises to Mountbatten Rd, we decided to open a Govinda’s Gifts shop in Little India along Serangoon Road to facilitate our preaching activities. In 1985, we had a similar store in Little India where we reached out to several souls whose lives were changed through Srila Prabhupada's books. We had closed the preaching store sometime in 1988 located at the current Serangoon Plaza.

We wanted to revive the store front preaching and with all earnestness, we were seriously looking for another location in the Little India area.

We managed to locate an outlet at No. 3, Kerbau Road. We were very excited with the news and immediately accepted the offer to occupy the place. The purported landlord Mr. Balakrishnan was only too keen in renting out his premises for our intended use. All went well and we soon started our renovation work for the shop. As the renovation work progressed, another interesting event unfolded.

The building had a living quarters behind the shop and the tenant living there was a Muslim gentleman, Mr.Hamid. He approached us to find out what was going on at the shop front. We gladly enlightened him about our new venture of a proposed new gift shop selling Srila Prabhupada's books and other religious artifacts. He was very happy to hear of our enterprise and welcomed us with an open heart although he was a Muslim.

However, he began to reveal that this Mr. Balakrishnan was a cheat and mentioned how he had cheated many other people like us in the same manner by purportedly renting out the property and then evicting the new tenant with them losing all their investment and rental deposits. Mr. Hamid further added that actually Mr. Balakrishnan was not the landlord. The property apparently belonged to Mr. Hamid's relatives and he suggested that we meet them to clarify the matter.

Following this turn of events, we readily accepted the proposal and went along to meet the new landlord who happened to be a Muslim lady. They hosted us in their house very warmly and began to tell their side of the story. The property apparently belonged to their father and this Mr.Balakrishnan rented it from them and soon after, he stopped paying any rent to them. They could not evict him as the property was awaiting repossession by the Government and they were waiting compensation and were not supposed to rent it out. Knowing this, Mr.Balakrishnan wanted to forcefully take over the property and claim that he was actually the person to receive the compensation as he was doing the business and was the rightful claimant. By some kind of trickery, he was trying his luck out.

After looking into all the relevant documents, we were firmly convinced that the property belonged to the Muslim lady and proceeded to deal with her and ignored Mr.Balakrishnan. Fortunately, we had not paid any monies to him and we did not reveal to him of our intentions too; it was a blessing of Krsna.

Once the renovation work was over, Mr.Balakrishnan came over requesting that we give him a set of keys too which we denied and also enlightened him of our intention of paying the rent to the Muslim lady. He was furious and threw himself into a rage and started to hurl abusive words at us but it was all to no avail as we were undeterred.

He was visibly very disturbed and would come daily trying to create a disturbance at the storefront thus making our sales difficult. We tolerated his menace and kept up our determined stand of not submitting to his attack. He was caught in a fix. He had lost his shop, the source of his livelihood, and had every reason to retaliate. Furthermore his chance of claiming a huge sum as compensation benefit was evaporating.

He then decided on his next course of action. It was a Saturday night. He brought some of his friends in a van to the shop after we had closed for the day in the evening to carry away all of our things and then to put a new lock. In other words, he wanted to evict us forcefully.

After we had closed the shop, he started his operation. While he was trying to break the lock, unknown to him and fortunately for us, there were some plain clothes detectives of the Police department doing their rounds and were just standing right in front of the shop. They inquired from him as to what he was doing. He remarked that he had lost his set of keys and was therefore trying to break the lock to replace it. The cops waited till he broke the shop open and they went in along with him.

By Lord Krishna's arrangement, the cop happened to be a friend of our society and and was taken in for a surprise when he saw that it was actually our shop. He immediately questioned and arrested Mr. Balakrishnan and then called us over. Mr.Balakrishnan was at a loss of words in trying to defend himself. The police had caught him red-handed while "shop breaking" which, as we later came to know, was a serious offence that carries a jail term of 7 years.

He was placed in jail while the police recorded our statements and was later released on bail awaiting trial. He eventually was very remorseful of his actions realizing the consequence he was about to face. He was pleading with our lawyer to drop the charges and to save him from this terrible outcome.

Finally, after a year or so, our legal solicitor advised us to pardon him and to receive a compensation for his folly. We too agreed to the proposal and proceeded on with our service of distributing Srila Prabhupada’s books with no hindrance and with greater vigour.

This proves to us how Krsna is always protecting His devotees who are sincerely trying to preach his Holy name. We went on to distribute many of Srila Prabhupada's books and introduced Krsna consciousness to many a soul.

Srila Prabhupada Sankirtan ki jaya!

-- By Sundar Gopal Das