Skip to main content

Divine Silence

Yesterday Maggie said, "Let's go to Arthunkal." Arthunkal is a Christian pilgrimage centre in Kerala, about 65 km from my home. "Okay," I said. It's quite some time since Maggie and I went on a long drive. That was the only reason as far as I was concerned. For Maggie, the visit meant much more than that. 
Outside the church
When we reached, the 9 o'clock Mass had just begun. Maggie chose to attend the Mass. Since that sort of prayer doesn't make sense to me, I decided to explore the church whose history goes back to the 16th century. It's then the Perpetual Adoration Chapel caught my attention. The chapel is a semicircular building whose door, the only one it has, remains closed. You enter and the door closes behind you. The atmosphere inside is cool and calm. When I entered there were just 4 or 5 devotees inside who were all praying silently. I sat down on a pew and closed my eyes. 
The church
Serenity surrounded me. Soon I was bathed in that serenity. I loved sitting there. A strange sensation gripped me and I felt happy to be there. It was more than happiness. I realised that prayer could make sense to me too. My prayer had no words, however. It didn't need any. I left that chapel after an hour or so with a rarefied feeling in my soul. 

 Don't take that too literally. I don't believe in a soul in the religious sense. 
The Perpetual Adoration Chapel
When the Mass was over, Maggie and I visited the old church that belongs to the 16th century. We spent some time in the holy premises before driving to the Thaickal Beach which is just a few kilometres away from the church. It's not much of a tourist destination. 
The old church, 16th century
The beach remains pristine because tourists haven't discovered it yet. There were some fishermen on the beach who were mending their fishing boats. They didn't look at the handful of tourists who wandered about the desolate beach like lost souls. 
At the beach
The silence was broken only by the sound of the waves that lashed the shore relentlessly. That sound had a music, as divine as the peace that descended on me in the Perpetual Adoration Chapel. 

Comments

  1. AniruddhFebruary 2, 2020 at 10:16 PM

    This is the first time I heard about Arthunkal. Nice to know about the Church as well on the beach. Today most of the beaches are crowded and polluted. Next time when I visit Kochi, I will definitely try to visit this place.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 3, 2020 at 6:45 AM

      The place is near enough to Kochi, just an hour's drive. There are a few more places of religious importance nearby.

      Delete
    2. Jacob MatheckenFebruary 4, 2020 at 8:31 AM

      Visit to Arthungal Church narrated so well that one could be transported there while reading it. This is one of the finest experiential writing straight from the heart despite the speed breaks from the head.Keep writing..Keep discovering..Keep on experiencing life..Keep on travelling on the road of time.

      Delete
    3. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 4, 2020 at 9:41 AM

      My head insists on jumping in with the speedbreaks. But that's unavoidable given my scepticism about matters of the heart. I have decided, however, to give a try to a few more such places. Maybe, Vallarpadam next.

      Delete
    4. Jacob MatheckenFebruary 4, 2020 at 10:14 AM

      "My Experiments with Beliefs" - in the offing....Gandhi Revisited..Internalised? Interesting.

      Delete
  2. Ira MishraFebruary 3, 2020 at 4:08 AM

    In fact the most beautiful are the places that are the least crowded and most popular with tourists. They have a beauty of their own that unique calmness about them as described by you :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Neeraj KumarFebruary 3, 2020 at 10:09 AM

    There is a kind of peace emitting from the pics. Reading words of the post makes one calmer. Indeed it is a divine effect.

    ReplyDelete
  4. rupam sarmaFebruary 3, 2020 at 3:15 PM

    Nice to read about Arthunkal. Beautiful post.

    ReplyDelete
  5. UnknownFebruary 3, 2020 at 5:57 PM

    Beautiful Post.

    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

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 4

The footpath between Park Avenue and Subhash Bose Park The Park Avenue in Ernakulam is flanked by gigantic rain trees with their branches arching over the road like a cathedral of green. They were not so domineering four decades ago when I used to walk beneath their growing canopies. The Park Avenue with its charming, enormous trees has a history too. King Rama Varma of Kochi ordered trees to be planted on either side of the road and make it look like a European avenue. He also developed a park beside it. The park was named after him, though today it is divided into two parts, with one part named after Subhash Chandra Bose and the other after Indira Gandhi. We can never say how long Indira Gandhi’s name will remain there. Even Sardar Patel, whom the right wing apparently admires, was ousted from the world’s biggest cricket stadium which was renamed Narendra Modi Stadium by Narendra Modi.   Renaming places and roads and institutions is one of the favourite pastimes of the pres...
12 comments
Read more

Good Life

I introduced A C Grayling’s book, The God Argument , in two earlier posts.   This post presents the professor’s views on good life.   Grayling posits seven characteristics of a good life.   The first characteristic is that a good life is a meaningful one.   Meaning is “a set of values and their associated goals that give a life its shape and direction.”   Having children to look after or achieving success in one’s profession or any other very ordinary goal can make life meaningful.   But Grayling says quoting Oscar Wilde that everyone’s map of the world should have a Utopia on it.   That is, everyone should dream of a better world and strive to materialise that dream, if life is to be truly meaningful.   Ability to form relationships with other people is the second characteristic.   Intimacy with at least one other person is an important feature of a meaningful life.   “Good relationships make better people,” says G...
21 comments
Read more

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 1

Inside St Francis Church, Fort Kochi Moraes Zogoiby (Moor), the narrator-protagonist of Salman Rushdie’s iconic novel The Moor’s Last Sigh , carries in his genes a richly variegated lineage. His mother, Aurora da Gama, belongs to the da Gama family of Kochi, who claim descent from none less than Vasco da Gama, the historical Portuguese Catholic explorer. Abraham Zogoiby, his father, is a Jew whose family originally belonged to Spain from where they were expelled by the Catholic Inquisition. Kochi welcomed all the Jews who arrived there in 1492 from Spain. Vasco da Gama landed on the Malabar coast of Kerala in 1498. Today’s Fort Kochi carries the history of all those arrivals and subsequent mingling of history and miscegenation of races. Kochi’s history is intertwined with that of the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British, the Arbas, the Jews, and the Chinese. No culture is a sacrosanct monolith that can remain untouched by other cultures that keep coming in from all over the world. ...
6 comments
Read more

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let...
36 comments
Read more