In2-MeC

Helsinki, Finland
11 October 2003

What follows was reported in the news on 27 July of this year.

Students from Hesalagarha Rajkiya Vidyalaya, an Indian government-run school at Angara in Jharkhand, were struck by lightning in the classrooms. Fifteen of them were rendered unconscious. Doctors arrived to find that local villagers had removed the students from the building and had covered them in cow dung. Within a few hours thirteen regained consciousness and were taken home. The remaining two were taken to a clinic. Ashok Bhokta, a local resident, said, "Cow dung is the time-tested and traditional cure for lightning-struck people. "

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This from April of 2003: An animal-rights group, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), offered officials of the city of Hamburg in Germany a stock of veggie burgers worth thousands of Euros if the city would change its name to Veggieburg. The officials refused.

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Sold out by a cell phone: in June here in Finland, the news reported about a man who, while cheating on his wife by making love to a girlfriend in a car, accidently pressed the auto-dial command on his cell phone. The phone rang his house number. His wife picked up and heard her husband's female friend moan, "I love you. " Later the wife so furiously assaulted the pair that she was sentenced to 14 months in prison. The sentence was suspended.

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A very weird story from July: Huang Tzu-Heng, a 20-year-old shop assistant in Taiwan, wanted to test love of his girlfriend, Hsaio Ian. He began e-mail correspondence with her under the name Mr. J. This correspondence turned into a cyber-romance. At the same time he continued to date Hsaio in his real identity. At last Hsaio told Huang that she didn't want to see him anymore as she had fallen in love with Mr. J. Huang committed suicide, leaving a note that revealed that he and Mr. J were the same man.

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There is a 74-year-old Croatian man named Frane Selak who lives in the town of Pretinja. In 1962 he was on a train going from Sarajevo to Dubrovnik when it ran off the rails and fell into the ice-cold Neretva River. Seventeen people drowned. Frane narrowly escaped drowning himself and had to be treated for hypothemia and a broken arm.

One year later he was flying aboard a DC-8 airliner between Zagreb and Rijeka. A door flew open. Frane and 19 others were sucked out of the aircraft. The other 19 died, but he landed in a haystack.

In 1966 Frane was riding a bus to Split. It went off the road and into a river. Four people died but he swam to the shore with cuts and bruises.

He was driving his car on the motorway in 1970 when the vehicle caught fire. He jumped free seconds before the fuel tank exploded. Three years later the motor of another car Frane was driving caught fire. Flames shot through the air vents, burning his hair off, but he survived.

In 1995 a Zagreb bus knocked Frane down, but he was only slightly injured. The next year he was driving in the mountains when he turned a corner to see a UN truck coming straight for him. To avoid a collision he had to crash through the roadside barrier. The car went off the side of the mountain and fell 90 meters, exploding at the bottom. Frane jumped out the door as the car went over the edge. He landed in a tree and survived.

In June of 2003, Frane won a half-million dollars at lottery.

No, there's nothing Krsna conscious about the tale of Frane Selak. In fact it's almost totally materialistic, except that he's an incredibly lucky man. The blessings of Goddess Laksmi are with him in this lifetime. It is said, "Faith begins where reason sinks exhausted. " From the point of view of reason alone, Frane's story is unbelievable. It should give rise to faith. Unfortunately, people are so dull in Kali-yuga that all the small miracles of life in this world fail to impress them.

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