Skip to main content

Lizard in the Church


What does religion mean? This is the fundamental question raised by Manu Joseph in his story (in Malayalam) titled Lizard in the Sanctuary.

A lizard is driven out of a library in a cleaning drive initiated by the new librarian. It takes shelter in the nearby church. After all, churches are meant for everyone, aren’t they? The lizard sits in the sanctuary right behind the inscription of INRI on the main cross. It observes everything, listens to all the prayers and sermons, and even attends a few catechism classes after the Sunday Mass. The lizard is fascinated by such a wonderful religion which teaches the faithful to love even their enemies. The lizard finds the melodious prayers and hymns soothing and moving. The lessons preached in the sermons are all so noble. The lizard naturally wants to become a Christian.

How to become a Christian?

The lizard carefully observes all the Christians who attend the church service. There is Mathew who takes a seat near to the women’s side and watches some beautiful woman most of the time. When the woman, conscious of the gaze, turns back to catch the staring eyes, Mathew will raise his hands up and utter devoutly, “My Lord, My God!” There’s Varkey who pats his big belly and asks his wife through a gesture whether breakfast is ready at home.

Someone has offered a fat cock to Saint George and it is being auctioned after the Mass. The auction seems to be a place where the rich members of the parish try to show off their capacity to spend money for the church. The cock goes for Rs3000 in the end and the successful bidder is Yohan with a thick gold chain on his neck and a very thick gold ring on his finger.

Eventually the lizard learns that Christianity is not exactly what Mathew and Varkey and Yohan do. There’s certainly more to it. It is about the Son of God who condescended to become a human being and then die on a cross painfully in order to wash away the sins of the world. How are the sins washed away by that crucifixion? The lizard is not sure. But it is impressed by Jesus’ sacrifice.

The lizard is even more impressed by the catechism classes in which Sister Lucia teaches the children about the infinite love of God as seen in Jesus’ act of consoling the women of Jerusalem while he carries his cross to Golgotha. “Weep for yourselves and your children,” Jesus tells the women. Such a selfless and considerate man! The lizard wants to become his follower. What kind of existence is it just clambering walls and eating insects?

How to become a Christian and make life meaningful?

The lizard eventually learns that one becomes a Christian through baptism. Varkey’s grandchild’s baptism is coming. All arrangements are made by the sacristan who has kept the baptismal font ready with water. The parish priest has to bless that water before it gets the power convert one into a Christian. The lizard waits eagerly for the priest to do that.   

As soon as Father Benjamin blesses the water, before the little infant gets its rightful chance to become a Christian, the lizard jumps into the font, eager to become a Christian.

“A lizard!” Father Benjamin points out to the sacristan who opens the valve at the bottom of the font. The water swishes out rapidly and the lizard is washed away with it: towards eternity. 


I have taken quite much liberty with my presentation of Joseph’s story here though I haven’t tampered with its spirit. I don’t intend to offer interpretations as I would like readers to interpret the story for themselves. All I’d like to point out is: this story is not just about Christianity. 

PS. The second illustration is taken from Madhyamam weekly in which Joseph's story appears. The first is created by Microsoft's Copilot Designer. 

Labels:

Comments

  1. Liz A.May 28, 2024 at 4:03 AM

    I think the lizard could do better. (But I have my own issues with organized religion, so...)

    ReplyDelete
  2. magiceyeMay 28, 2024 at 6:28 PM

    Blind faith does strange things to people and lizards seeking succour.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMay 28, 2024 at 7:22 PM

      The library was better but unfortunately the lizard was driven out...

      Delete

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
44 comments
Read more

The Second Crucifixion

  ‘The Second Crucifixion’ is the title of the last chapter of Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins’s magnum opus Freedom at Midnight . The sub-heading is: ‘New Delhi, 30 January 1948’. Seventy-three years ago, on that day, a great soul was shot dead by a man who was driven by the darkness of hatred. Gandhi has just completed his usual prayer session. He had recited a prayer from the Gita:                         For certain is death for the born                         and certain is birth for the dead;                         Therefore over the inevitable                         Thou shalt not grieve . At that time Narayan Apte and Vishnu Karkare were moving to Retiring Room Number 6 at the Old Delhi railway station. They walked like thieves not wishing to be noticed by anyone. The early morning’s winter fog of Delhi gave them the required wrap. They found Nathuram Godse already awake in the retiring room. The three of them sat together and finalised the plot against Gand
6 comments
Read more

Vultures and Religion

When vultures become extinct, why should a religion face a threat? “When the vultures died off, they stopped eating the bodies of Zoroastrians…” I was amused as I went on reading the book The Final Farewell by Minakshi Dewan. The book is about how the dead are dealt with by people of different religious persuasions. Dead people are quite useless, unless you love euphemism. Or, as they say, dead people tell no tales. In the end, we are all just stories made by people like the religious woman who wrote the epitaph for her atheist husband: “Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.” Zoroastrianism is a religion which converts death into a sordid tale by throwing the corpses of its believers to vultures. Death makes one impure, according to that religion. Well, I always thought, and still do, that life makes one impure. I have the support of Lord Buddha on that. Life is dukkha , said the Enlightened. That is, suffering, dissatisfaction and unease. Death is liberation
4 comments
Read more

The Final Farewell

Book Review “ Death ends life, not a relationship ,” as Mitch Albom put it. That is why, we have so many rituals associated with death. Minakshi Dewan’s book, The Final Farewell [HarperCollins, 2023], is a well-researched book about those rituals. The book starts with an elaborate description of the Sikh rituals associated with death and cremation, before moving on to Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and finally Hinduism. After that, it’s all about the various traditions and related details of Hindu final rites. A few chapters are dedicated to the problems of widows in India, gender discrimination in the last rites, and the problem of unclaimed dead bodies. There is a chapter titled ‘Grieving Widows in Hindi Cinema’ too. Death and its rituals form an unusual theme for a book. Frankly, I don’t find the topic stimulating in any way. Obviously, I didn’t buy this book. It came to me as quite many other books do – for reasons of their own. I read the book finally, having shelv
10 comments
Read more

Hate Politics

Illustration by Copilot Hatred is what dominates the social media in India. It has been going on for many years now. A lot of violence is perpetrated by the ruling party’s own men. One of the most recent instances of venom spewed out by none other than Mithun Chakraborty would shake any sensible person. But the right wing of India is celebrating it. Seventy-four-year-old Chakraborty threatened to chop the people of a particular minority community into pieces. The Home Minister Amit Shah was sitting on the stage with a smile when the threat was issued openly. A few days back, a video clip showing a right-winger denying food to a Muslim woman because she refused to chant ‘Jai Sri Ram’ dominated the social media. What kind of charity is it that is founded on hatred? If you go through the social media for a while, you will be astounded by the surfeit of hatred there. Why do a people who form the vast majority of a country hate a small minority so much? Hatred usually comes from some
8 comments
Read more