Devils

Fiction

“Jet Airways acknowledges the valuable support we received from passengers like you for over 25 years. We regret to inform you that this is our last flight as we are suspending our services from tomorrow…”

Tony looked at the passenger next to him to make sure whether he had a sense of humour. The passenger’s belly that sat heavily on his lap led him to the assumption that he must have a sense of humour. So he said turning to him, “Hope they won’t suspend the service mid-air; may God save us.”

“What?” The passenger woke up from some reverie. “Did they say ‘May God save us’? Means there’s no hope?” And he laughed.

“Oh, no!” Tony hoped that the airlines was secular. At least the hemlines of the skirts of the airhostesses were secular, he had noticed. “They just said that their achhe din are coming to an end.”

“Hahaha,” the passenger laughed and his belly danced in his lap. “Achhe din came to an end for everybody in India some five years back, din’t they?” He laughed again. “By the way, I’m very reverend father Ambrose Mendelus. Basically from Goa, but serving in Mumbai and now flying to Delhi on duty.”

“I’m Tony Joseph from Cochin.” Tony extended his open palm for a friendly shake hand but the passenger took no notice. Tony was glad, however, that the woman passenger next to him had got down in Mumbai and a male passenger came in her place on the Kochi-Delhi flight, the last flight of Jet Airways. A historic journey, he thought. But the woman was a typical Malayali with the feminist version of the Malayali snobbery. “Just leave me alone,” she ordered the air-hostess at the first opportunity, “and wake me up as we’re landing in Mumbai.”

Very reverend father Ambrose Mendelus pushed his belly with his palm as he squeezed himself into the middle seat which had been warmed by the Malayali feminist snobbery.

“It’s achhe din for cows,” Tony ventured. He would be dodging the stray cows on the roads in Delhi from tomorrow onwards while driving to his office and back.

“Oh cows, poor devils,” Very reverend father Ambrose Mendelus said, “I miss beef steak with garlic.”

“Cows are like our gods, not devils,” said Tony. “We use them for so many purposes.”

“Hahaha, devils stand in need of greater versatility, you mean? Isn’t that why God created us human beings?”

The plane shuddered paroxysmally. “Is there god in an air pocket too?” asked Tony.

“God must be there in the veins of the chicken whose neck you slit for your chicken tikka masala.” He didn’t laugh.

“And in the cabbage you chop up…”

“And in the radish you chew down…”

“In the bread we eat…”

“In the wine we drink…”

“We are the devils…”

“Consumers of gods.”

Comments

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...

The Call of Islamic State

A year ago, the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – The Hague (ICCT) reported that about 4000 people from the West left their homes and countries to join the Islamic State (IS). Many of them are women. The reporters had made a special study of the women who joined the terrorist outfit and found that it was difficult to categorise which type of women were particularly drawn to IS. “While most of the girls are young, some as young as fifteen,” says the report, “there are also mothers with young children who make the trip. Some of the girls have difficulties in school and are said to have an IQ below average, but there are also women who are highly educated. It also appears that even though a relatively large portion of the girls had (or still have) a troubled childhood, there are some who come from families with no known problems with the authorities. Most of the girls come from religiously moderate Muslim families, yet some converted to Islam a...

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...

The Plague

When the world today is struggling with the pandemic of Covid-19, Albert Camus’s novel The Plague can offer some stimulating lessons. When a plague breaks out in the city of Oran, initially the political authorities fail to deal with it as a serious problem. The ordinary people also don’t view it as an epidemic that requires public action rather than as individual annoyances. The people of Oran are obsessed with their personal sufferings and inconveniences. Finally the authorities are forced to put Oran in quarantine. Father Paneloux, a Jesuit priest, delivers a sermon declaring the epidemic as God’s punishment for Oran’s sins. Months of suffering make people rise above their selfish notions and obsessions and join anti-plague efforts being carried out by people like Dr Rieux. Dr Rieux is an atheist but committed to service of humanity. He questions Father Paneloux’s religious views when a small boy is killed by the epidemic. The priest delivers another sermon on the necess...

AAP and I

Who defeated Arvind Kejriwal? Himself or us? His party ruled for just 49 days. They were momentous days. He implemented his promise on setting up a number for reporting corruption; in two weeks instead of the promised two days. He met people to discuss corruption issues, though the crowd was beyond his control. He did what he could. He would have done more if he could. He put an end to the VVIP culture in politics. The politician became aam aadmi. Ministers started travelling in vehicles without the screaming red lights and horrifying screeches. But the police had to go out of their way to provide protection to the chief minister. Who defeated the chief minister’s vision that political leaders need no such protection from their own people? He revolutionised the admission procedures in schools. Schools which charged hefty amounts from parents illegally stood to lose. The aam aadmi would have g...

Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Search This Blog