BS.AS. - WOMAN PLUNGES 23 STORIES, AND LIVES

ARGENTINA: WOMAN PLUNGES FROM 23RD FLOOR
SURVIVES FALL BY LANDING ON THE ROOF OF A CAB

Buenos Aires (www.npr.org) - A woman throws herself from the 23rd story of a Buenos Aires hotel Monday and survives. The woman landed in a sitting position on the roof of a taxi whose driver got out just before the impact deeply dented his roof and shattered the windshield. The woman, a 30-year-old Argentine, was rushed to the nearby Hospital Argerich, where she was operated for injuries including internal bleeding and broken hips and ribs, and had a lung, a kidney and her spleen removed. Alberto Crescenti, director of Argentina's Emergency Medical System, estimated that the woman fell nearly 100 meters (330 feet).
She plunged from the top of the Hotel Crown Plaza Panamericano, where a restaurant overlooks the landmark Obelisk in downtown Buenos Aires.

Witnesses in the restaurant atop the Panamericano hotel, described how she had calmly ordered a coffee and left her purse behind before taking off her shoes to climb over a safety barrier and jumping. “Then she walked to the edge, went back to talk to other person, then she turned around and she jumped,” they said. The taxi driver, Miguel Cajal, explained that he jumped out of the car because he saw a policeman stopping traffic and looking up. Moments later, the driver's side of the car was smashed by the woman's body. “I felt this explosion and I saw this woman's body sunken into the roof of my cab. The first thing I did was call my family. And then I just started to cry; it is really hard to see something like that,” the shocked taxi driver said.


The taxi driver was also treated for shock. He has attributed to his intuition and his quick reflexes to have escaped alive from the impact, as the roof and windshield of his vehicle were completely destroyed by the fall. “To see a person falling is terrible,” he said. Reflecting on what has happened, and with his voice breaking, the taxi driver concluded: “I ask people to think that everything has a solution and that life is for living. “ Indeed, suicide is no solution, nothing is gained by killing the body. We must be brave and with God as our loving shelter, try to solve our problems and find the true goal of our life.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

We have to learn these things, Prabhupada was saying that only coming close to Krishna you can be released from anxiety, there is no other way. We have Krishna and we have to give Him to others; if you haven’t got Krishna, what have you got? alcoholic beverage, pornography, decay, or the best, suicide. The darkest thing, to want to kill yourself, that is the reality of things, if you don’t have Krishna, then you want to commit suicide. Krishna is the only real medicine, and this is not fanaticism, because Krishna is real and because you need Krishna, perhaps some others do not need Krishna, but you do need Him. ... And always taking Krishna as our relief and our refuge, as Srila Sidhar Maharaj said: “we can do many things, we can have many plans, but ultimately it’s going to happen as Krishna wants, and that is our comfort; man proposes and God disposes, then we are always in the hands of Krishna, like it or not.”

Śrīla Atulananda Ācārya :
“To be an Instrument of Krishna”
Lecture given on December 30, 2007
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