Skip to main content

Saints and other Absurdities



The Saint is a short story written by Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  In that story, a man named Margarito Duarte always carries around with him a small coffin with a dead body that never decomposes.  It is the body of his daughter who died at the age of seven because of a fever.  He had to disinter the body because a dam that was going to be constructed required the acquisition of the parish cemetery.  All the parishioners disinterred the tombs of their beloved so that the bones could be buried in a new cemetery.  Margarito found the bones of his wife who had died giving birth to their daughter.  But when he opened the tomb of his daughter he was in for a shock.  his daughter’s body had remained intact eleven years after the burial.  His daughter looked alive with her eyes open and sparkling.  Margarito, who had not studied beyond the primary school, believed what the villagers said: “the incorruptibility of the body was an unequivocal sign of sainthood.”  Even the local bishop agreed.

Margarito takes the coffin to Rome.  He makes a supplication to the Pope to declare his daughter a saint.  He waits for an answer from the Vatican.  The Vatican is no less than God especially in answering supplications, especially those concerning sainthood.   Popes come and go.  In fact, Margarito waits 22 years and four Popes from Pius XII onward come and go.  Margarito still waits.  After 22 years of waiting, Margarito says, “I’ve waited so long it can’t be much longer now.”  And Marquez concludes the story with the words, “he (Margarito) had spent twenty-two years fighting for the legitimate cause of his own canonization.”

Margarito is the real saint, according to Marquez.  He is a saint because of his single-minded devotion to perceived sanctity as well as his faith and hope.  What else is religion?  What else is saintliness?

These were the thoughts that ran through my mind as I read about many godmen in the last few weeks.  Some of the best articles about contemporary godmen and other vampires can be found in the recent issue of the Frontline.  One can always visit godmen’s ashrams and find out more ‘truths’ personally.

What makes Marquez think of Margarito as a saint?

I think of Sisyphus as a saint.  Sisyphus is a Greek mythological character.  He spent his entire life pushing a rock uphill in order to challenge the gods who had punished him with that task of pushing the rock.  He knew that he would never succeed.  The gods would always push the rock downhill just as he reached the summit of the hill.  Yet Sisyphus climbed down the hill without despair and the spirit of daring in order to pick up his rock once again.  That daring with its single-minded devotion as well as the faith in himself (minus any hope, though) makes Sisyphus a saint for me.  Conventional religions will have problems with Sisyphus’ faith in himself rather than the gods as well as his lack of hope. 

Let us take an example from a very conventional religion, Catholicism.  Simeon Stylite (390-459).  He is canonized as a saint by the Catholic Church.  What did he do in his life?  He lived on top of a pillar whose height he kept on increasing as years went by.  Single-minded devotion to God.  He hated women.  He hated even men!  This is what the famous historian, Edward Gibbon writes about the saint:

In this last and lofty station, the Syrian Anachoret resisted the heat of thirty summers, and the cold of as many winters. Habit and exercise instructed him to maintain his dangerous situation without fear or giddiness, and successively to assume the different postures of devotion. He sometimes prayed in an erect attitude, with his outstretched arms in the figure of a cross, but his most familiar practice was that of bending his meager skeleton from the forehead to the feet; and a curious spectator, after numbering twelve hundred and forty-four repetitions, at length desisted from the endless account. The progress of an ulcer in his thigh might shorten, but it could not disturb, this celestial life; and the patient Hermit expired, without descending from his column.

What do the sages hope to achieve in their solitary hermitages in the Himalayas?  Single-minded devotion.

Single-minded devotion is saintliness.  That is just what Marquez was trying to convey through the story. 

But devotion to what?  Not to sex or wealth or political/manipulative power. 

Devotion to some absurdity.

Life is absurd, asserted the philosophers of the Absurd like Albert Camus.  Can you fight it with single-minded devotion like Sisyphus?


PS.  I’ll be totally away from blogging for a week as I’m an acolyte of single-minded devotion.  I’ll be away on a certain duty which will hopefully refresh me as much as the rock refreshed Sisyphus.


Comments

  1. Single-minded devotion and focus is indeed saintly.
    Blessed are those who can manage...
    All the best to you to stay away from Blogging for a week...I know it'll be tough!
    But, accomplishing your task should make it worthwhile! :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Staying away will be difficult...I know! :)

    Regards
    Sammya

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...

Dharma and Destiny

  Illustration by Copilot Designer Unwavering adherence to dharma causes much suffering in the Ramayana . Dharma can mean duty, righteousness, and moral order. There are many characters in the Ramayana who stick to their dharma as best as they can and cause much pain to themselves as well as others. Dasharatha sees it as his duty as a ruler (raja-dharma) to uphold truth and justice and hence has to fulfil the promise he made to Kaikeyi and send Rama into exile in spite of the anguish it causes him and many others. Rama accepts the order following his dharma as an obedient son. Sita follows her dharma as a wife and enters the forest along with her husband. The brotherly dharma of Lakshmana makes him leave his own wife and escort Rama and Sita. It’s all not that simple, however. Which dharma makes Rama suspect Sita’s purity, later in Lanka? Which dharma makes him succumb to a societal expectation instead of upholding his personal integrity, still later in Ayodhya? “You were car...