I am sitting on the floor in the departure lounge at Borispil airport in Kiev . I came to the airport with Niranjana Swami who is traveling to Moscow as I travel to Delhi. I scanned a 900-page book for him with a digital camera with some help from some other devotees, and we stopped at a store on the way to the airport because he wanted to buy me a digital camera as gift because I didn't have one. He couldn't find a model that had a matching flash card, so it didn't work out, but I appreciate his kind sentiment. I ended up only sleeping two hours the last night as I wanted to complete the scanning of the book before I left.
The Ukrainian devotees had a very lively kirtana for Niranjana Swami 's departure, and they packed nice prasadam for both of us. I praised him for his training the devotees to be so respectful and having such a serving attitude to the senior devotees. I told him I was thinking of doing a seminar at Odessa, and I proposed to speak on the first four verses of Nectar of Instruction. He thought that was a good idea. Bhagavad-gita is often discussed, but Nectar of Instruction, although highly relevant to our lives, is less so.
It was nice to meet some very nice disciples of Niranjana Swami who came to Kiev to spend this holiday season of Karttika with their spiritual master.
Niranjana Swami walked past me on his way to his plane. He said he made one last attempt to find me a digital camera in the airport, but they did not have any there. He gave a little devotee girl, who is also going to India with her parents, a sweet from his lunch, and he also gave one to me. And he told me to keep in touch with him.