"I need to go to the hopsibul, Mother"

Tirucub spent long hours working further on the plans for the hospital. Sometimes Spotty and Omcub and Arunacub would come over and check on his progress and make suggestions.



Mother Hippo was finding she had her hands quite full. First Crumple fell down (on purpose) and said he could not possibly get up. He needed to be taken on a stretcher to the new hospibul!



Then Rumple fell down too, and said they would need twin stretchers. From somewhere, he had heard that the hopsibul served chocolate milk and other things to tempt weakened creatures who had lost their appetites. "I am weak! I need to go to the hopsibul and have chocolate milk every day till I get my strength back!" he cried.



A peacock came by and informed the hippos that it was really a bird hopsibul and they should not get their hopes up.

Not too far away, some giraffes were talking. "Imagine! He is designing the hopsibul tall enough to fit us!"



"Oh no," two skunks told them. "We have it from the highest authority ... er, not quite the highest ... that the ceilings are very low ... it is only meant for small creatures. Like, well, skunks."

Meanwhile, over at the mansion, Dmitri (whom Swami Miracleananda had sent back to Russia to drum up devotees) had finally arrived back with a little troupe of Russians.

There was confusion right from the start.

"Krackaswami!' they had greeted him at the door. "At your feet we rain salutations and protestations ... prostrations!"

"I am not Krackaswami!"

"Oh! Dmirtri is telling us a Krackaswami full of grace is here to exit us from sufferings in our cardiac regions."

At this point, poor Dmitri, who had gone way out on a limb, urging his very own bother and his sister-in-law and his uncle and aunt, and two of his co-workers to liquify their assets and get on an airplane, piped up. "Krackaswami, please! You asked me to bring participants to you for your great work! Please, this is no time to play humble underdog and crunge out of sight!"

"The word is CRINGE, and I have never cringed or crunged in my life," bellowed Swami Miracleananda. "I have a new and better name. I will reveal it to you when I see if the donations are enough to loosen my sacred tongue. Egoless, I have no control over my own mouth ... er, over what WOULD have been my mouth, had I not been born enlightened ... but is really the mouth of the divine."

"Fine, fine, dear Holiness," said Dmitri.

"Perhaps Papa was right," said Dmitri's brother in worried tones. (Their father had been adament that Dmitri had been put under some extreme form of mind control on his trip, and that no one name Krackaswami, proposing a trade of money for enlightenment, could possibly be legitimate. "Is business deal, son! When money changes hands, is BUSINESS DEAL! I may not have university degrees like you, but I know a business transaction when I see one. Do not go back, and leave your little brother out of this nonsense!"

"Come in, then," said Swami Miracleananda. He led them up to the attic.



"First, there is something we need, and one of you must get it. It is a little book called Have Love For All Creatures. It is probably over in the cave of some lions ... go and get it, and do not get caught."

"Can't I dash into Tiruvannamalai and pick it up for you?" asked Dmitri. "Wouldn't someone there have it? Must we venture into a lion's den?'

"The Way of Bliss is not for the faint-hearted! Of COURSE you must get it from a lion's den and not from some little bookshop or tea stall or whatever you are thinking. Have you not heard? The Divine TESTS you to see if you are ready. So let us see if you are."