Thrills in Wellington
In Wellington, recently, there have been some frightening looking billboards for a new “mocumentary” comedy television series, called Wellington Paranormal, wherein police hunt ghosts, werewolves, and paranormal phenomena.
This made me recall a sunlit evening on the corner of Cuba and Ghuznee, in Wellington, during the December marathon. A man was hanging around in a high-visibility orange vest while I was distributing. He was on the phone the whole time and adjusting road cones placed in a couple of parking spaces. As the evening went on, the flow of people died down, and I looked over at this man, now sitting down on a bench.
As I approached him, he gave me a “I know what you’re doing” smile. I was persistently friendly and asked him some questions. I found out that he was actually part of the television crew for this forthcoming series, Wellington Paranormal. On that particular evening it was his job to reserve parking spaces for the movie crew, filming at the famous Cuba Street Bucket Fountain location. The scene, he told me, involved dying the water in the fountain red to look like blood!
He told me that, yes, he was a spiritual person (a “do-gooder”). He was very friendly, and we had a nice chat. I told him that he would like these books and placed them in his hands. I remember his face completely lighting up, as though saying, “Really? Are these for me? Wow!”
It was like the freshest thing he had seen in his life. He gladly gave a donation for the monks and took the Bhagavad-gita. As I continued to stop others, I watched this man start reading the Gita on the bench, whilst waiting for the movie crew. To me, this was a more thrilling scene than vampires and werewolves.
Your servant,
Kunja Mandana Dasi
