London To Africa

By way of Dubai

The Sunday feast in London begins at eleven o' clock. Tridandi Maharaj arrives just before eleven, and gives the talk to a small group of people: about eight Indians and two fidgety kids.

More devotees show up for the arati and a few more devotees and guests arrive just before prasadam is served. The feast is good, but there is so much prasadam left over that it has to be distributed to passers-by in the street. I'm told that the Sunday feast turnout is usually much larger than this. Most people must have gone to the Notting Hill carnival :-)

I was hoping I might get some word about my old godbrother and friend, Kali Yuga Pavana Prabhu, while I was in London. Does anybody know of his whereabouts?

Later that afternoon, Srilekha Devi Dasi (who lives near Gatwick) gives me ride to the airport to get my Emirates Airline flight to South Africa. I am booked on a seven-hour flight to Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. The flight leaves shortly after nine o' clock; it is almost full, so I don't get much sleep as we fly over a cloudy, therefore darkened, Europe.

As we fly along the Persian Gulf I watch almost voyeuristically from a vantage point of 39,000 feet as night flirts with day: the earth turns her face to be kissed by the sun and the color slowly returns to her pale cheeks as she blushes coyly in his warm embrace.

I am brought back to earth as the plane lands in Dubai.