The time was early enough to provide a calming and comforting vista of empty, slushy streets as his cab sluiced up the narrow canyons leading into Foley Square. Four chartered buses parked in front of the court building directly behind a television truck provided the first shiver of anxiety in the young attorney as he paid off the cabdriver and hurried up the freshly sanded steps. Even in the sealed container of the elevator with its attendant hum, rhythmic sounds could be heard increasing in volume as the car approached the seventh floor, sounds that exploded into joyous chanting, ‘HARE KRISHNA! HARE KRISHNA! HARE KRISHNA!’ as the doors slid open to a corridor packed solid with more than a hundred and fifty Children of Lord Krishna, who, he later learned, had arrived with the dawn from their gurukula in Bronxville to pay tribute to the venerable saint Gupta Pradesh, the first of Brice Mack’s witnesses. Girls and boys, ranging in ages from thirteen to eighteen, all dressed in saffron robes, the girls’ foreheads daubed with paste, the boys’ heads shaved except for the topknot enabling Krishna to yank them up to heaven at the proper time, were gathered in a six-deep phalanx down the length of the corridor, hopping up and down, beating drums, ringing bells, and chanting ‘Hare Krishna’s over and over, transforming the bleak, sterile surroundings into a gay and vivid bazaar.
