Bloor St., Toronto
Still Here?
I was crossing the street at the
corner of Bay and Bloor. It was after shopping hours and an older man, also
crossing, said, “Are you still here?”
“Sure am!”
“I was at your temple last Sunday.”
He informed.
“I hope you liked it. Sounds like
you’ve been coming for some time, otherwise you wouldn’t ask that question.”
When I said that, he continued walking in the other direction, but then turned
around and shouted, “Hey!” So, I stopped and waited for him to come back with
more to say.
“You Hare Krishna’s should start
a bank,” he suggested, to which I responded, “I’m sure someone of us is already
working on that.”
He came back with this, “I saw a
show about the Vatican. They’ve got trillions. They started a bank.” The man
moved on. I continued walking through the Yorkville area and came upon a street
called St. Mary’s and there I stopped when I saw one of those historic plaques
about a famous holocaust survivor from Hungary whose name was George Faludy.
Apparently, he lived here on St. Mary’s and wrote a bestseller, My Happy
Days in Hell, about the oppression of the war in Europe. I read the plaque,
stood there and I imagined him still there on the street, in spirit, like a
ghost.
It was then time to turn back for
the ashram, and one fellow burst out the door of a concert hall in
Yorkville. He saw me, undid the hood of his hoodie and opened his eyes wide,
surprised to see me. “Since I was a kid, coming to the Hare Krishna temple,
I’ve seen you. We just finished playing. We had a guy on mrdanga and
everything. I still can’t believe you’re still around.” The theme for tonight
was “Still Here?”
May the Source be with you!
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