Holy man of many parts
HIS HOLINESS Bhakti-Tirtha Swami Krishnapada is anything but the willowy, wizened sage you expect to find when meeting the international leader of the Hare Krishna Movement. For a start he is Afro-American, the world's only black swami. He's also a giant of a man with a raucous laugh and booming baritone.
When he steps from the lift in the Ramada Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui, wearing a flowing orange robe with a garland of brightly coloured flowers, there is no bowing from the waiting Krishna disciples and he greets me with a firm handshake and businesslike banter.
Krishnapada may not look like the sterotype of an Eastern mystic, but he is no ordinary man, either. Church preacher at the age of nine, Princeton University graduate, a leader in Reverend Martin Luther King Jnr's civil rights movement, Nigerian high chief, friend of Nelson Mandela and a Vaishnavu guru, Krishnapada appears to be living several of his incarnations at the same time.
'My life is very unusual,' he says with a beaming smile and uncharateristic understatement. 'I wear three hats. From a Western perspective I'm a psychotherapist and scholar in international relations, from an African perspective I'm a king and from an Asian perspective I'm the only Afro-American swami in the world. Put it all together,' he says, his words tailing off as he rotates his arms in a giant circle and delivers another almighty chuckle.
Krishnapada smiles and laughs with such infectious enthusiasm it seems he has found the elixir of life, or many lives. His three-day stop in the SAR is part of a whirlwind, 32-country trip around the world to meet as many of the estimated 15 million Hare Krishnas as possible and enlighten millions more. His task in Hong Kong is somewhat smaller. The city's temple, close to the hotel on Chatham Road South, has four full-time devotees and a congregation of about 50 or 60 followers who continue to live and work in the world, although they are not of it.
As religious zealots go, Hare Krishnas are pretty easy-going. They're easy to spot, usually venturing out in a small procession, shaven-headed and wearing long orange robes while chanting mantras and chiming singing bowls as they seek money and to spread the word.