Janamastami - Book Lounge!

An exciting innovation of the Festival Organising Team at ISKCON Toronto, led the Sankirtan Team to a Book Lounge in Govinda's! What followed, was an exciting and very encouraging Sankirtan experience after many years at a festival as packed as Janamastami!

The Book Lounge, setup in the Govinda's along with two other booths (one by ISKCON Cinema and another with Gopidots and Tilaka) had facilities to display books for sale as well as for guests to sit around and read the books available. Our enthusiastic team distributed books way past midnight, our highlights were the special Krsna book sale and also 3 small books for $5.
The Sankirtn Team distributed 35 different titles sold, for a total of 112 books, including 29 Krsna Books (highest count / book) and 1 Krsna Art book for a total collection of $767.25 laxmi points!

Krishna book – The heart of India

I met this lady and she was just passing by but somehow stopped when she heard about the monk. We got talking and I showed her the Bhagavad-Gita and she just turned her head around saying it was too much. Remembering Vaisesika prabhu, I thought lets show her the 'Perfection of Yoga' and she took it and gave me some laxmi for it. I thought I should keep trying. So I asked her more questions and found out that she had recently gone to India and spent 6 months studying Buddhism. So we talked a bit about Monks and Buddhism, while I was contemplating my next steps. Then I thought of trying an old tip by Vaisesika prabhu, and I said– hey you know what You want! - a book about India – here take the Krishna book. And she just took it. I showed her pictures, told her these were very easy narrations to read and had beautiful pictures (that she liked) and told her that it would give her the heart of India. I showed her the addresses of bhakti yoga centers at the back of Krishna book and she liked that for her future travels to India. She left with the Krishna book and happily gave her email to stay in touch.
- Mangal Aarti Devi Dasi