Mahendranath and Mohanasini stopped at airport due to luggage violations: Too many pieces, most of which were too heavy too carry what to speak of over weight, and oversized in permittable dimensions.

Action: Leave luggage behind due to insufficient funds for repacking and handeling.

Order given by the Officer Of The Day: (official in total charge of the airport in bombay)

    This is a very sweet story which did in all respects occur without exaggeration in the Bombay Airport about 8 years ago.

    My wife and I had arrived with our luggage at the airport with enough time to board with some time left over.  At least this is what we thought.  First we were directed to a superintendent because our luggage was obviously oversized, too many, and far too heavy.  We pleaded our case that it was difficult to resist the spiritual beauty of the products of India but this argument along with any other argument was ineffective due to the size and overall mass of the luggage.  Ignorance of airport limitations and regulations was considered contemptible and we were about to be separated from our luggage, then and there.  It seems that the limits of the size was considerably smaller than we had, and that the weights were in most cases twice that of the limits.  In fact we had spent in excess of 28,000 rupies on deities, their paraphenalia, and musical instruments.  I told my wife that we would be foolish to purchase the items which are regularly imported at a reasonable cost to the devotees and that we should concentrate on our home based deities, brass ware and musical instruments which were costly after import.  Well, truth be told I was the fool here because the total weight of the luggage was ludicrous.  Radha Krishna and the eight gopis, fancy arotike paraphenalia, multilevel ghee lamps, Sitar, Tamboura, Esraje, Shenai, Karatals, Gong, Harmonium and more all packed in a half a dozen oversized trunks each of which took 2 men to carry.  No one would even talk to us about getting such an excessive cargo aboard.  We were directed to the officer of the day and told that we would be leaving the baggage behind and if we had something like 20,000 rupies then we could get someone to recrate everything according to policy.  We could receive it in a as little as a few weeks.
Needless to say I was distraught.  Our ballance was 1,600 rupies of which 100 were going to leaving the country tax.  The superintendent which was assigned to get us on board our flight told us to put the luggage on their scales which only confirmed the horror of it all and then on the conveyor which would scan for contraband with x-ray.  I do not know to this date why they were scanning the luggage if they were not going to ship it.   I suppose he was about to configure some plan and perhaps a receipt for the stuff left behind.  I was considering staying behind with the goods and working my way home on a steamer.  That would probably be a foolhardy mistake.  We even searched for phone numbers to devotees stateside and in India for funds and storage of our endangered possessions.
    Finally the superintendent told me to put the last oversized trunk on the x-ray conveyor and with the help of a couple of passers by I was able to.  The conveyor labored as it tried to inch the mass forward.  Finally the trunk disappeared beneath the rubber flaps and the superintendent stopped the machine.  There was a look of awe and surprise on the face of the man as he stared at the x-ray screen.   That monitor had been transformed into an altar of the Supreme Lord, Personality of Godhead and His Consort, Sri Sri Radha and Krishna.  The Deities, Krishna with flute in hands, poised perfectly in the center of what appeared to be an x-ray based altar.   Although no endeavor was made to create this effect we would have been taxed to make it any better.
    Well although the rest is very simple exact details escape me due to the fact that everything happened so very, very, quickly.  The superintendent was definitely a Vaishnava who saw the incident as a Divine instruction from Krishna directly to him to get Him (Sri Krishna) to America, post haste.  With fever he issued instructions to the many airport baggage workers and with intensity usually associated with fist fights he ordered the other officials and clerks hands off and out of the way.  Their crys of, "This luggage is so bulky, it will smash the other luggage." and, " These things will break our backs and give us hernias." fell on deaf ears for this superintendant was on a mission and empowered.  I do not know who this transcendental Lone Ranger is, but I owe him a great debt indeed.

Unloading in New York is yet another story...

Mahendranath das, Captain of the "JAI NIMAI NITAI".