Celebrating Mia

It was Mira's bday yesterday. With her dad away, celebrations went awry. But the kids anyway had fun at the church. A family friend had offered to take us to church in the morning.

The mass was followed by the church harvest festival, so there were a lot of auctions, food, stalls and games. Heated auctions for gold coins, wooden crosses, rosaries and wine from Israel brought by pilgrims to the Holy Land from the church; auctions for produce from the soil such as ethakula, drumsticks, kudampuli (kokum) and so on. I bought a pair of giant-sized vellarikkas (a cucumber variety that Keralites use in sambar) at the auction, my first accidental venture into auctioneering. The stalls had kota and organdy saris that the elderly Malloo Christian women like to wear to church, salwar material, second-hand toys (I bought one each for the kids while Mira got a pretty cow as a gift from Lijy) raw tapioca, Kerala goodies such as plum cakes, halwas and neyyappams, a naadan thattukada where appam and curry and other things palatable were made in a jiffy for the waiting devotees; and tupperware products where I bagged a complimentary fork. Before we peeped in at the stalls, we gulped down appam and chicken curry for a price, which wasnt as meagre as the parson had announced. The kids surprisingly enjoyed their second breakfast for the day. We sat and watched the auctions for a good while before calling it a day (not forgetting to buy kappa-fish curry for lunch) and squeezing ourselves into the car to visit Lijy's newly acquired and just renovated apartment.

On Ash's frequent query about when the happy birthday would come (he probably expected a birthday Santa to appear or at least the cake), we cut a Joecees plum cake that his grandparents had brought from Kerala. Propped the No. 3 candle on the cake and then Ash and me sang the happy birthday song. Ash blew out the candle before Mira could, so we had to light it again for her benefit. Topped it with vermicelli payasam.

Now that V is back, we hope to cut a 2nd cake today evening and call a couple of folks. Mira's birthdays have been jinxed so far - there were no celebrations in the first year because Ash was away in Kerala, she had a mild attack of chicken pox in the 2nd year, and this year her dad played truant. Anyway she had new outfits to wear - one for the church courtesy her aunt Renee, one for school today courtesy mil's tenant, while her first ghagra choli courtesy her granny awaits for the night event.

The faithful

As we drove out of the college premises, which provided the parking space for all the vehicles of parishioners attending the Good Friday mass, we passed an elderly lady and a young lady with a little boy in her arms trying to navigate the puddles while holding umbrellas to shelter themselves from the incessant rain. I had never seen it rain so early on Good Friday. Usually the skies darken only after the service is over making the blind faithful among us believe that nature was mourning the death of the Saviour along with us (St. Luke 23: 44-45). But then GF had never come this early either for ages.

Well, what I was saying was that the narrow dirty road with slum dwellers on one side of the church-college campus is sickening (you cant help throwing up if you see young kids defecating on the roadside early in the morning) to pass even on a bright sunny day but I always try to tell myself that the road to heaven is narrow and difficult. And to walk through it on a rainy day is torture but if we cant do it for Christ on Good Friday, when can we?

V, feeling extremely benevolent after a just-finished late lunch of kanji-payar-papad courtesy the church, asked me if I wanted to offer a lift to our less-privileged pedestrian churchmembers. I, feeling no less benevolent, rolled down the window and waited for them to come abreast. Yes, they happened to be on our route but further down but they would take an auto/bus from the stop nearest our place. They spoke a mix of Tamil, Hindi and Malayalam as they tried to shove the little boy onto the back seat first. "They dont seem to have come to the church, but doesnt matter...," V said, a trifle disappointed.

The ladies thanked us profusely for showing kindness to strangers. And yes, they had come for the Good Friday service. They were from Palghat and they had been coming to this church for the past 5 years.

We lapsed into silence.

"Oh. I didnt know there were many Orthodox Christians in Palghat," I said, conversationally after a while.

The older lady hesitated, and then said: "Well, actually we are Nair Hindus but we have become Christians and we now worship only Jesus. And the madam who introduced us to Christ comes to this church, so we have been coming here too. And the Lord has been very good to us. See, today devan (god) has helped us in this pouring rain by bringing you people before us. We dont even know your names or anything about you but we are very happy to have met you."

By then we had reached their bus stop. The cute little boy was called Johan. The mother-daughter-son opened their umbrellas and ran off to the bus shelter.

"Strange to have met somebody like that!" V remarked, feeling rather overwhelmed by their faith. "Coming to church in this heavy rain with a little child. And here we leave our kids at home not wanting them to come out in this weather or this crowd."

Where are we as Christians when those who are not Christians by birth feel closer to Jesus than we do? And when do we initiate our little ones into the hardships of the Good Friday mass, when one experiences at least emotionally the trauma of the Crucifixion?