My First Day in Jail - By Kaunteya Das

I mean my first day preaching in jail. The desire of doing something in the prisons had been off and on in my mind since a long time. On top of that recently the ISKCON Prison Ministries joined the ISKCON Congregational Development Ministry as an integral part of it, and therefore I also felt that it was my duty to become more acquainted with that reality. A few days ago I got the opportunity to enter a prison and give a lecture to the inmates.
The meeting has been arranged by Mother Vasanthi, better known in the devotee community and in her workplace as Dr. Vasanthi. She has working for more than ten years as a physician in various prisons in Madras, India, and since joining ISKCON she has worked to introduce Krishna consciousness in six of such institutions, engaging her medical position and her personal influence (and her compassion…). It wasn't always easy. A few months ago, for instance, after the Hindu-Muslim riots in Gujarat, the political administration of Tamil Nadu (the state of Madras), to prevent religious tensions, banned all religious preaching in the jails. But she kept going, and now that the emergency has eased, she is able to bring even other people to meet, talk with and chant with the inmates. So a few days ago I went with her to the Madras Central Jail or something like that, a prison for two thousand inmates. She has so much clout in the ambience that nobody checked me, even cursorily (I could have brought anything inside). Anyway, she brought me to a place that previously was the prison hospital and that she turned into a temple (I tell you, many ISKCON centers in the world don't have such a well-ventilated, spacious temple room).
I counted 33 laminations of standard BBT paintings gracing the walls and giving the place almost the look of an art gallery and certainly a very spiritual atmosphere. The place of the "temple" is peaceful-it doesn't even feel like being in a jail. Outside, in front of a little shrine of Durga Devi, a John Lennon-looking inmate from North India was absorbed in reading scriptures.
She showed me the recently-build fences to protect the prison offices: sometime back the inmates burned a guard alive-an especially nasty one apparently. Hmmm… we are in a prison after all…
I was curious and expectant to see the inmates I was supposed to preach to. How would they look? What would their mood be? But seeing them was an anticlimax: these are normal people. In one sense more normal than those outside, their humanity and vulnerability more evident. They made wrong choices; they made mistakes; they are now paying. But they are extremely fortunate: I remembered the episode in which Haridasa Thakura is brought to jail and told the prisoners: ""Now you can all together constantly chant the names of Krishna and think of Krishna. Here you have no envy or trouble from others, so you can humbly chant and think of Krishna. Otherwise if you again return to material enjoyment, by bad association you'll forget everything about Krishna."
We had a lecture and then a bhajan that transformed into kirtana. They were very sweet and appeared grateful. Dr. Vasanthi told me that sometimes back-before that batch got released-she had the temple room filled with prisoners who were chanting sixteen rounds.
There is an amazing opportunity to preach to millions of men and women suffering in the world's jails. Many of them are much more receptive to Lord Caitanya's message than those outside, distracted by the myriad of objects and names and forms, their mind spinning in an endless sequences of illusory engagements.
I had the clear insight that to preach to these same people would have been much more difficult if they were outside, in the world at large, embedded in their often dysfunctional environment and weighted down by unhealthy association. While they are in jail they have plenty of time to reflect, to read and to chant, and to realize that real freedom is only at the lotus feet of Krishna.