29. The Weird Visitor

Michael is standing, together with a few ISKCON members, behind a folding table under a giant tree in St. George’s Park serving homeless people. It is delicious, free, karma free meals freshly prepared. Most of the street kids and beggars are by now old customers. They are waiting anxiously for these free, tasty and filling meals like the previous days and they quickly form a queue. Word has spread and every day the group becomes larger as new people arrive. A new visitor, clad in a dirty, shabby, brown coat with strings of hair hanging down to his feet, approaches slowly. It must be a homeless Rasta! He moves queerly, bending forward and his face is covered so that only the bushy beard shows behind the hair curtain. He follows slowly and patiently up to Michael and holds out his hands in a pleading gesture. Michael hands over a paper plate but suddenly the man grabs him by the wrists and slightly pulls him forward over the table. Frightened Michael sees how the hair opens like a curt