Skip to main content

A Crucifixion

Fiction

“Aren’t you going to see the crucifixion?”  Tobit heard his neighbour, Jeremi, ask. 

A man called Jesus was going to be crucified along with two thieves.  Every crucifixion is an entertainment for these people who are burdened with the agony of existence.  Caesar and his men impose all sorts of taxes whenever they need money.  The priests in the temple keep giving rules just to make sure that no one ever rises above their control.  Taxes and rules.  What else was the lot of the common man?  The sweat of his brow.  That was God’s gift to them from the time He created Adam and Eve.  Taxes, rules and sweat.  A crucifixion was good entertainment whenever it came. 

But Tobit was not happy.  He knew Jesus.  He knew him from the time he was a tiny baby brought to the temple for the ritual dedication.  Simeon, the holy man, was present in the temple that day.  Tobit was there because he wished to seek the blessings of Simeon. 

Simeon took Jesus from Mary’s hands and said, “This child is going to mark the rise and the fall of many in Israel.”  He raised his eyes to the heavens and uttered a silent prayer.  Then, giving the child back to Mary, he said looking into her eyes sadly, “A sword will pierce your heart.”

Tobit’s heart trembled in his breast.  Evil forebodings rose in his heart churning his core.   He went out to vomit.

Tobit was just another ordinary carpenter.  A man who learnt the job from Joseph, Jesus’ father.  Otherwise he would have taken little interest in what Jesus said and did.  In whatever happened to him.  There was nothing new about people coming and proclaiming the end of the world.  His people, the Jews, were used to prophets of all sorts.  Those who warned them.  Those who cursed them.  Those who wept over them.  Some of them gave more commandments.  Not one prophet was ever happy with the world.  Not with the world of Yahweh’s chosen race, at any rate.  Tobit longed to see one smiling prophet.  A prophet who could teach the people to smile.  Who could tell them that life was not such a pain in the ass as made out to be by the prophets and other men of religion. 

Then came Jesus.  He smiled.  He tried to, at least.  Little children made him smile.  And he asked the people to be like the little children.  How absurd!  But no one can be a prophet, a man of God, without being absurd.  Tobit knew that though he was only a carpenter. 

Tobit also knew that Jesus was hurling himself headlong into a whirlpool of troubles.  Because Jesus was challenging the priests.  He challenged the law.  What is Judaism without its countless laws? 

“Man is not made for laws,” Jesus proclaimed rankling the blood in the veins of the priests.  “The one among you who has not broken any law so far, let him cast the first stone at her.”  Jesus said to the multitude that waited eagerly for their occasional entertainment of stoning a woman to death. 

He stole the law from the people.  He stole their entertainment.

He was thus a thief.  Law-thief.  Entertainment-thief. 

He promised them smiles.  But they wanted guffaws. 

The legislator washed his hands and said, “I want no share in the blood of this just person.”  He had better entertainments. 

“Crucify him!  Crucify him!” the multitude shouted eagerly.  Their hunger for entertainment had turned into impatience. 

“No, I don’t want to see it,” Tobit said to Jeremi.

A sword pierced Tobit’s heart.  A smile was dying on Golgotha.  Darkness was spreading across the sky. 

For copies click here
or here
More options soon

Comments

  1. wingsNovember 14, 2015 at 10:56 AM

    I just read the blog on my smartphone. Then came a whatsapp message from the writer of this blog and was little embarrassed to know that some message from my side would put him in some sort of inconvenience of laughing out in a public place.
    I told him in my whatsapp message: ...thought you are at home because you posted a blog at 9.22 am'

    Now on a second thought, I felt I should have told him thus: Oh my god! Just at 9.22 am Jeremi killed you; and your people and I.....!
    Something like what Antony says to a throng of Romans when Caesar died!
    (In lighter vein...but the story is a parable for all ages.)
    I shut my mouth for appreciation :(
    I know I will always be speechless after reading your blogs.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 14, 2015 at 12:43 PM

      I'm getting used to the "infinite deaths" mentioned in my story 'Motion without Displacement" which also you liked. If my stories leave you speechless, I have reasons to feel fulfilled as a writer. A few minutes back I received another whatsapp message that my writing is at times too "mystical". I don't mean them to be. I wanted my writing to be always simple, easy for anyone to understand. But life teaches us such lessons that simplicity is stolen from our hearts. Perhaps my current habitat may turn out to be curative. It's a much 'simpler' place in comparison with Delhi.

      Delete
  2. Titas BiswasNovember 14, 2015 at 8:48 PM

    At this time,in a very long time,I read something that could give thoughts a form,a real form.WOW.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Art of Subjugation: A Case Study

Two Pulaya women, 1926 [Courtesy Mathrubhumi ] The Pulaya and Paraya communities were the original landowners in Kerala until the Brahmins arrived from the North with their religion and gods. They did not own the land individually; the lands belonged to the tribes. Then in the 8 th – 10 th centuries CE, the Brahmins known as Namboothiris in Kerala arrived and deceived the Pulayas and Parayas lock, stock, and barrel. With the help of religion. The Namboothiris proclaimed themselves the custodians of all wealth by divine mandate. They possessed the Vedic and Sanskrit mantras and tantras to prove their claims. The aboriginal people of Kerala couldn’t make head or tail of concepts such as Brahmadeya (land donated to Brahmins becoming sacred land) or Manu’s injunctions such as: “Land given to a Brahmin should never be taken back” [8.410] or “A king who confiscates land from Brahmins incurs sin” [8.394]. The Brahmins came, claimed certain powers given by the gods, and started exploi...
15 comments
Read more

The music of an ageing man

Having entered the latter half of my sixties, I view each day as a bonus. People much younger become obituaries these days around me. That awareness helps me to sober down in spite of the youthful rush of blood in my indignant veins. Age hasn’t withered my indignation against injustice, fraudulence, and blatant human folly, much as I would like to withdraw from the ringside and watch the pugilism from a balcony seat with mellowed amusement. But my genes rage against my will. The one who warned me in my folly-ridden youth to be wary of my (anyone’s, for that matter) destiny-shaping character was farsighted. I failed to subdue the rages of my veins. I still fail. That’s how some people are, I console myself. So, at the crossroads of my sixties, I confess to a dismal lack of emotional maturity that should rightfully belong to my age. The problem is that the sociopolitical reality around me doesn’t help anyway to soothe my nerves. On the contrary, that reality is almost entirely re...
14 comments
Read more

Mahatma Ayyankali’s Relevance Today

About a year before he left for Chicago (1893), Swami Vivekananda visited Kerala and described the state (then Travancore-Cochin-Malabar princely states) as a “lunatic asylum.” The spiritual philosopher was shocked by the brutality of the caste system that was in practice in the region. The peasant caste of Pulayas , for example, had to keep a distance of 90 feet from Brahmins and 64 feet from Nairs. The low caste people were denied most human rights. They could not access education, enter temple premises, or buy essentials from markets. They were not even considered as humans. Ayyankali (1863-1941) was a Pulaya leader who emerged to confront the situation. I just finished reading a biography of his in Malayalam and was highly impressed by the contributions of the great man who came to be known in Kerala as the Mahatma of the Dalits . What prompted me to order a copy of the biography was an article I read in a Malayalam periodical last week. The article described how Ayyankali...
14 comments
Read more

Duryodhana Returns

Duryodhana was bored of his centuries-long exile in Mythland and decided to return to his former kingdom. Arnab Gau-Swami had declared Bihar the new Kurukshetra and so Duryodhana chose Bihar for his adventure. And Bihar did entertain him with its modern enactment of the Mahabharata. Alliances broke, cousins pulled down each other, kings switched sides without shame, and advisers looked like modern-day Shakunis with laptops. Duryodhana’s curiosity was more than piqued. There’s more masala here than in the old Hastinapura. He decided to make a deep study of this politics so that he could conclusively prove that he was not a villain but a misunderstood statesman ahead of his time. The first lesson he learns is that everyone should claim that they are the Pandavas, and portray everyone else as the Kauravas. Every party claims they stand for dharma, the people, and justice. And then plot to topple someone, eliminate someone else, distort history, fabricate expedient truths, manipulate...
14 comments
Read more