The best shopping in the world

A few years ago I told you I went to an Indian bookstore in Calcutta called "The World's Best Bookshop." In Fort Lauderdale there are also shops with that kind of name. One shop is called "The World's Best Sport Shop." Another place is called "The World's Best Tea Shop." Hardly four persons can sit there, but it is called "The World's Best"! Other places are called "The World's Largest." Our small meditation hall is three times as large as those places! In other places, if they have four or five pairs of skates, they will put them on a table with a sign: "World's Best." If you ask the price, it is twenty-nine or thirty dollars — very expensive.

And these stores have very, very few things. You can go to ten athletic stores, and you will be finished in each place in five minutes. Very few shops have a second story; there is no upstairs. Sandhani's sports store is bigger.

The shopkeepers are rogues. I was looking for the kind of belt that weightlifters use. One shopkeeper told me, "We don't have what you are looking for, but our branch in Coral Gables definitely has it." He said that their branch store in Coral Gables was more established, whereas this store was about to close down. I believed him, and Savyasachi drove us to the store. It took us twenty-five minutes. But when we reached Coral Gables, they didn't have one single belt. What can you do? The shop was smaller than the smallest and everything was so expensive!

From:Sri Chinmoy,Salutations, numbers 5-8, Agni Press, 1981
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/slt_2