Told by Bhaktin Annette to Kalyani d. d.

This is a story which proves that the mercy of Srila Prabhupada flows like the river Ganga, reaching those souls others cannot.

A few years ago, in a small village in Roscommon County, one of the most rural parts of Ireland, there lived a man by the name of Michael Henmore. He never married and at an early life became a hermit. He had few possessions except a cow, a horse and a cart, and a small house that time had forgotten. He lived without running water or electricity. Every few days he would journey to the nearest village to draw water from the well. He spoke to no one, not even relations. He had an unkempt beard and wore old-style clothes. So strange was his appearance that children would jeer him, while tourists could not resist the chance to photograph him. He would spend his day cooking his simple meal, making hay for the cow, or farming the small plot of land attached to his cottage. Nobody ever visited him; many were afraid of him. What drew him to this lifestyle nobody knew. Only one thing was certain: he would never again live as part of the modern world.

Eventually Michael, or Mad Mick as the village people called him, grew old, and he left his body in the same way he had lived most of his adult life: alone in his cottage. His cottage and land were to be sold and the proceeds divided among his sisters and brothers. One sister happened to be the mother of a devotee, Bhaktin Annette. That sister decided to clean and decorate the old cottage before selling it. One of the last places she cleaned was a shelf in the small sitting room, where she found Bhagavad Gita As It Is with a bookmark in it.

Nobody could reach Mad Mick. As Annette often remarks, he would be the last person a sankirtan devotee would stop. He looked completely pennyless. Nobody could reach him, nobody but Srila Prabhupada and he was preaching to him.

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