The tale of his wanderings as my brother, Rebbie-ji, recounted them to me in Kolkata at Mother Teresa’s starter hospice, now reconsecrated as Rabbi Tabor’s House of Holy Healing ashram—that tale as he laid it out before me to cheer me up with its happy ending, had by then already been sculpted and polished into lore—epic and myth. Whenever he and his flock, including women and children, arrived in their wanderings at a new place, Shmelke told me, their modus operandi was to take over an entire motel and camp there until, for one reason or another, they were forced to move on.

As he recalled those unsettled years, Shmelke shook his head as if in disbelief. The most amazing thing about it all, he said, was that just about wherever we went—and they had stopped at a multitude of out-of-the-way places, seriously off the beaten track on this lonely planet, he assured me, he would only mention some of the major power points—the motel they took over was always owned by an Indian named Patel. After a while, Shmelke would just roll up to the front desk upon arrival surrounded by his tight escort of the inner circle of his Hasidim secret service, his arm outstretched in readiness for a hearty handshake provided the clerk behind the counter was not a female, and he would boom out, “Sholom aleikhem, Mottel Patel. How’s it going? Vos makht a Yid?” And indeed two of these Mottel Patels, big Mottel and little Mottel, eventually converted to Judaism thanks to my brother’s charismatic influence and took the names Mottel Patel-Aleph, since he was the Patel from America, and Mottel Patel-Zayin from Zimbabwe. Now that these two freshly Jewish Mottel Patels were back home in India they rechanneled the skills acquired for survival in exile, bustling around the ashram in their glossy black beards and sidelocks, great bowled white yarmulkes fitting snugly on their heads setting off their dark skin, robed in long kaftans girded with a rope belt, in charge of overseeing the hospitality end of the operation.