Famous Singer from Lithuania
I was distributing my CDs of "Saints' Bhajans" and "Meditative Maha-mantra" together with Prabhupada books in different States of America. The mantra was the same: "I am Your neighbour, I stay with my friends. I am from LIthuania, Europe, and I am famous singer there. Just recently I recorded my CDs in very good studio, so I was thinking that maybe my neighbours would like to have them?" Neighbours were excited to meet beautiful famous singer from abroad, they became very receptive, very artistic, supportive, etc. So many good things you can say about your neighbours. To present myself and my CDs first I found much more effective in book distribution than to push Prabhupada's books into his belly asking: "Take them!" The person goes back and immediately says "no" shutting the door in front of your nose. You become the looser. People are very sensitive as we are. They like very personal, individual approach. Each of them likes it, as we do. Our sankirtana mission is to fulfil Lord Caitanya's order: "Give Holy Name and Krishna to everyone You meet. The Holy Name must be chanted in every town and village". Why not at all houses of Your neighbours? Or out of Your neighbour's window? For that the Holy Name must be so much sweet, so much attractive that they would loose their heads and forget that You are a Hare Krishna, and just take it with tears in their eyes. I thought that my recordings were slowly doing it. They are not perfect, but doing their job. Now when the neighbours are seeing me passing by with books and CDs or just in the shop they smile at me, greet and talk about my beautiful songs. I am singing about Krishna, so they are talking about Krishna! Actually they are not so much into words, they are completely into the music, melody which brings them to the sky, to the angels (as they think). My voice they call "angelic". I give my CDs to the excited neighbours who kindly believe me or want to listen first, then happily give me nice donation for my songs, take the translation of the bhajans, Prabhupada's book about divine couple and promise to write me an e-mail how do they like the CDs and books. Most of the time they write about the CDs – my songs, not books. Because they like me as personality, they like my signature on the CDs I gave them, and because they listen to my music all the time. Reading is a bit tough thing. First, you have to understand what you read, second, no time, third, maybe later, later, later, fourth, they are just forgotten on the shelf. It takes time to open a book. But everyone likes the music, immediately, especially good one. Sound and Holy Name go directly to the ears and from them to the heart. They listen to it in the car, at home, everywhere. Therefore I get so many e-mails from different neighbours about my devotional singing. One young man Chris Regna is writing: "Good morningI Thanks for stopping by my house last night with the CD. I hope my kids didn't scare you. You are very beautiful and have a lovely voice. Good luck! Chris" Another woman Savannah Murphy from a lawyer association writes to me: "Hello Jagat – kirti 🙂 I purchased two CDs from You today for a pathetic $ amount, would like to pay you more – they are so wonderful! Please, send me a mailing address where I can send you more money, or feel free to stop by the green house on Orme Circe again sometime. With your extraordinary talent, I am sure you will go far! Very nice meeting you today. Kind regards, Savannah." One lady from Chicago was so inspired that my second name is also Maria. Because of that we became close friends. She writes to me in e-mail: "Hello, How are You? I hope You are well. We met a week ago or so in Chicago on Lunt. I introduced you to my daughter Jillian, my name is Maria. I promised I would write, so here I am. I listened to Your CDs and they are very good. You have a lovely voice. I admire your courage in sharing it with strangers, face to face. Where are You traveling now? I hope you are well and sharing your music with new people. Enjoy your travels. Best of love, light and joy to you! Maria." I got so many similar e-mails from different neighbours of different places I visited.
When next day I try to finish the street of my neighbours and pass through the houses I was yesterday, neighbours who already are my friends stop me on the street, thank me again for beautiful bhajans, wave me from their balcony together with children, wave from their cars, cars stop just on the street and call me to come asking for more CDs, or neighbours return apologising that they did not give enough money for my devotional CDs, because they did not expect they will be so wonderful, for this reason they put more lakshmi in my hand. Everyone promises to keep in touch with me when I come back to my country. But most of them forget their promise or to write is not the same as to talk personally and interact.
If I stay at the hostel, then I make my whole performances there: sing bhajans, dance classical indian dances, recite poetry about Radha-Krishna pastimes, then finally distribute my CDs and Prabhupada books to the audience. Here is the gratitude letter from "Hostels of America": Jurate performed for us, she did an amazing job, she was very professional and very entertaining. We all enjoyed her very much. We believe that Jurate will be very successful in her business. We were very pleased with her performance. She looked and sounded amazing, her performance was very unique and very tastefully done. Thank you, Jurate, you are very talented. We will remember you at the Hostel. Yours truly, Susan Clark." The manager told me that when she was listening to my CDs in the car she could not drive, because she was always crying, and the tears did not allow her to see the road… This is the feeling of Gopinatha's love to every fallen conditioned soul. And they feel it with all their spiritual bodies. Only the time separates all of us. Prabhupada told us to use all our skills in Krishna's service and to perfect them for His pleasure to attract all fallen conditioned souls, who are very sincere, because they are just ignorant. We have to use everything what we have, every single word or gesture to attract human beings, even non-human beings, to Krishna. So that we would not go away disappointed or blasted. We must blast people with all our abilities. Everyone, just everyone. No one should escape. He must cry for Krishna, he must dance for Krishna. Not everybody takes philosophy immediately. Only very rare souls. But the rest mass we must catch with what they like the most. Our duty is to stop them and to mesmerise them with Krishna. Consciously or unconsciously.
By Jagat Kirti Devi Dasi from Europe, Lithuania (JPS)
