Port of Spain,
Trinidad
The Special Stone
When you are a monk, people offer you
gifts. While in Montreal recently, I was given one. On the outside of the plastic pocket it read,
“Akhavan—Natural Volcanic Pumice Stone.”
Inside the clear plastic was a handsome, pitch-black pumice for scraping off dry, dead
skin from the bottom of the feet.
How thoughtful and
unique a gift!
At airport customs, it appeared somewhat
irregular on the screen. “Is this yours?” the officer asked, segregating my
orange-coloured piece of baggage from the other, less eye-catching ones owned
by passengers. He inspected it, approved
it and I was on my way to Trinidad.
In Port of Spain, at
customs, I received a bit of trouble again.
My filled-out form was complete, but they wanted a contact number where
I would be staying in the country. The
directory book, a Bhaktivedanta Book Trust publication
which I carried, did not include a
phone number for the Longdenville temple.
To use the slang, “I was skunked.”
The female official
was quite formal about it.
Straight-faced, she demanded “a contact.”
“We can look it
up. Do you have a phone directory? God’s my contact.”
“We don’t have
one. Ask an agent in the airport. Next….”
Fortunately a nice man,
an official, looked up the number on his phone and I breezed through. There at the arrivals was my dear friend,
Agnidev, the well-known bhajan
singer. It was good to see him. It was good to get my feet on the
ground. I can’t wait to use my pumice stone.
May the Source be with
you!
4 km
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