Muralishwar Prabhu and I were supposed to get the 7:30 train to Zaporizhzhya in the Ukraine tonight, but the traffic jam in downtown Moscow is horrendous! It takes us an hour and twenty-five minutes to get to the railway station; we miss the train by about twenty minutes.
Now what? I berate Vanamali Prabhu, our driver, for leaving so late. His service is to get us to the train station on time, and he has failed to do that. Now the devotees in Zaporizhzhya have to be notified, meetings have to be cancelled, public programs have to be rescheduled, and Srila Gurudeva's money has been wasted on our (non-refundable) tickets... what kind of service attitude is that?
What is the use of being given a responsible service that affects the activities of so many other devotees if you are not going to act responsibly? Poor Vanamali Prabhu apologizes profusely, but I am not listening. He says he has never seen such a traffic jam in Moscow. Uh-huh. It won't ever happen again. Yeah, right.
However, when we return to the temple, going the other way, the traffic (and my anger!) has dissipated: the trip takes us exactly twelve minutes. I apologize to Vanamali Prabhu.
I go straight to bed. The next train to Zaporizhzhya leaves at 4:35 tomorrow morning. You can bet I'm going to be on that one.
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