In a village lived two persons name Susanta and Krtanta who had for a long time been mischievious towards one another. Once they had been good friends, but somehow or other that friendship turned to rivalry. Now their relationship centered on one making trouble for the other, back and forth, tit for tat.

Susanta, at last tired of this endless bickering with Krtanta, decided to take a pilgrimage on an auspcious day to Jagannatha Puri. Hearing this, Krtanta grew morose. “”If Susanta leaves here,” he thought, “how will I be happy, unable to torment him? And how will I be happy knowing that he is enjoing peace and quite on his pilgrimage? Better I devise a means by which he won’t leave here. Then I can continue to give him trouble every day.”

Knowing that Susanta was a believer in omens, Krtanta decided that he would cut off his own nose and sit in front of Susanta’s house on the morning he was to leave. Susanta, seeing the inauspicious sign of a noseless person on the first step of his journey would turn around and go back in his house, cancelling his journey for at least some time, if not for good.

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Similarly, atheists plot conspiracies against Vaisnavas without regard even to their own appearance in human society. Even if it is obvious to everyone that such a person who hates Vaisnavas is simply a madman, he’ll not desist in reinforcing that impression by continually criticizing devotees no matter what.