Lunatics in Collision

In the centre of Leicester, in recent times there has been a funny old beggar with a beard, who plays tunes through a child's plastic trumpet. At some point, I had realised that this man was not only begging for money, but also promoting some kind of deranged version of Christianity. Multi-tasking, in the modern style.

      On Saturday, I saw him putting away his stuff quite early in the afternoon, which surprised me. Suddenly he turned round and shouted: “It's idiotic! You are the ones that will perish!”. Or some such lunatic nonsense. I stared at him in bafflement. Then I became aware that he was shouting at the Hare Krishna people over at the Clock Tower, who were chanting and jingling their bells. “Hare Krishna, Hare Rama,” etc. They had him outnumbered. And they had an amplifier.

      Lunatics in collision. Or at least eccentrics. On this occasion the Krishna people were all Asian. Usually they are a mixture of white and brown. They were chanting away relentlessly, and seemed to have worn the old man down, possibly without even noticing him. They too are begging for money.

      Is there a relationship between lunacy and religion? Some atheistic people have thought so, but it seems to me there is a relationship between lunacy and everything. At any time, a certain proportion of humanity are suffering from mental illnesses, and they naturally interact with everything that the sane people do. Just in a different way.