Fiction
Reverend
Father Lawrence Marangodan was restless.
He walked up and down the rubber plantation of the parish church while
the parish priest, Reverend Father Daniel, was preaching a Charismatic retreat
to the parishioners. The cries of ‘Praise
the Lord! Alleluia!’ rose and fell like the frenzied waves in a disturbed
ocean. Father Marangodan’s mind was even
more disturbed. The spiritual
masturbations of charismatic retreats could never ease his mind. Worse, he had just received a note from
Reverend Sister Prarthana.
Dear Father,
I need help. Benjamin is becoming a serious pain in the
neck...
Benjamin
was a boy in class three of the primary school run by the parish church and
Sister Prarthana was the class teacher.
Whenever Sister Prarthana’s heart longed for the proximity of Father
Marangodan, Benjamin became a pain in some convenient part of her body.
Father
Marangodan did not like what he called the spiritual masturbations of charismatic
retreats. Otherwise he was a committed
priest of the Roman Catholic Church, the assistant of Father Daniel. He wanted the church to be more orthodox than
charismatic, austere rather than boisterous, more compassionate than exuberant. He liked Sister Prarthana’s approach. She cared for the individual children of her
school. She patted their cheeks and ran
her fingers through their hair. She
threatened to beat them with the cane that was kept perennially on her
table. Occasionally she would even
threaten to shoot them or chop off their heads with an imaginary sword. Like in: Children,
don’t force me to take out the pistol from the drawer or Kids, I have a sword hidden beneath my
tunic.
Father
Marangodan overheard her once and thus became her counsellor. “Don’t use such violent metaphors in front of
children,” he said to her. He exhorted
her to imbibe the forbearance and stoicism of Our Lord. “Always keep in mind the image of the Lord in
Gethsemane.”
Sister
Prarthana tried her best to keep the image of the Gethsemane in her mind. But the more she met Father Marangodan, the more Paradise kept invading
Gethsemane. Instead of the Lord, it was
Adam that entered the Eden of her mind and she was Eve there. She was troubled by the strange resemblance
which her Adam had with Father Marangodan.
“Don’t
let Satan into your soul,” warned the priest.
“You and I are religious and our way is strewn with pebbles and
thorns. Gethsemane is our only
garden. Take the Eden out of your
mind. Embrace the cross...”
“The
Eden refuses to fade from my visions,” confessed Sister Prarthana days after
she had carried out the penances stipulated by Father Marangodan.
Sweat
drew Father Marangodan’s soutane close
to his skin. These days the very sight
of Sister Prarthana made his body hot and it sweated profusely. He wished Sister Prarthana did not have such
beautiful dimples on her rosy cheeks.
Praise the Lord! Alleluia!
The
chanting from the church brought Father Marangodan back to the present. Back to Sister Prarthana and her Benjamin-the-pain-on-her-neck and the dancing dimples on her rosy cheeks. Father Marangodan’s soutane was wet with
sweat. The breeze brought down some dry
rubber leaves on him. It cooled his body
too.
Reminded me the novel "The sands of time" by Sydney Sheldon.But there Reverend mother Benito and her group of sisters..!
ReplyDeleteInteresting I reminded you of Sheldon.
DeleteGosh! It is hilarious! Hope you are not banned from church.
ReplyDeleteHappy to have got a reader who grasped the hilarity... I excommunicated myself from the church long ago.
DeleteInstead of excommunicating yourself, I think you ejaculated yourself .....to use your metaphor....lol
DeleteThe nuns in my primary school taught me a lot of ejaculations. According to them, they would fetch a lot of indulgences. LOL
DeleteThe world belongs to Marangodans. LOL
Delete