Night Vigil

Fiction

“Alleluia Alleluia...” Anna shouted along with the hundreds of devotees attending the night vigil. The Alleluia cries were interspersed with ‘Praise the Lord’ and ‘Amen’ shouts too. In the background was permissibly highest decibel music that violently struck the indigestion in your innards. Right in front of the altar was a priest in white cassock who behaved like a prestidigitator clapping hands, shouting verses from the Bible mentioning the chapter and verse, and asking the devotees to shed their sins. “Come on, Joe, Mary, Tessy, Mathew… look into your hearts and see the darkness of the sins you’ve committed.” The priest, Rev Fr Joseph Thonnivasathil VD, was shouting through his collar mike.

In spite of all that commotion, Annamma heard the vibration of her mobile phone in her entrails. So palpable was the vibration that she thought the call must be from Jomon, her husband, though that was quite unlikely because Jomon was the lead singer in Rev Fr Thonnivasathil’s Night Vigils.

By the way, I know I’m telling a story that is being read by people from all kinds of religious and irreligious and blasphemous backgrounds. So, being a good teacher though not a good story teller, I must tell you what a night vigil is. It is a device invented by some Catholic priests with the intention of bringing the faithful back to the church building. Since we live in hard times, in spite of Modiji’s claims about GDP, BJP and other Pees, all useful people are too busy during the daytime to attend the morning Mass and appendices like the office of the dead in the church. So the parish churches are empty in the morning except for some harried old women who come to buy their front circle seats in heaven since their entire life on earth had been their hell.

Our protagonist, Annamma, is attending one such night vigil with the motive of ensuring a front circle seat in heaven. She is a nurse in a prominent hospital in Delhi. Oh, did you know that Delhi has some Catholic churches too and that too owned by the proud Zero-Malabar faithful from Kerala? The Malayalis are so proud of themselves that they carry their cooking vessels and praying traditions with them wherever they go. Even in Timbuctoo you will find a Catholic Zero-Malabar priest and some Malayali Alleluias.

I’m sorry for this sort of digressions. This is how I am. A woefully bad story teller and a worse teacher. I have a student who puts his head down on the desk the moment I digress from the topic in class. I’m fortunate to have Abel as a student. Now I would like to have him here too as a reader of my blog to point out my drawbacks. Abel is my best critic. My benefactor. My God.

Annamma’s God is somewhere in the outer space where she believes is a place called Paradise. God is sitting there on a throne. All around Him are the angels singing alleluias all the time in high decibels that sends reverberating Doom-Doom pulses into Annamma’s weakening veins. Doom is something that enchants Annamma. She thinks Paradise is a kind of doom, the End, though she doesn’t want any ends. If science could give her immortality, she would choose to live here on earth for ever rather than there in God’s Paradise though she is in love with alleluias.

Annamma’s mobile phone’s ringtone is also an Alleluia. The phone is on silent mode now since Annamma is a devout Zero-Malabar Malayali attending the night vigil in Saint Thoma’s Church in Tughlakabad Extension of Delhi. Rev Fr Thonnivasathil VD is choreographing a humungous dance from the stage (what has become a stage for him, I mean). Everyone around Annamma is swaying to the music of that paradisical choreography. Annamma was swaying too until her phone vibrated. Annamma thinks the call may be from her husband Jomon. They love each other so much that the love is palpable even in the vibrations of their phones.

But it is not Jomon who is calling. He is there on the stage with Rev Fr Thonnivasathil VD creating waves of divine music with his melodious voice. Alleluia. Praise the Lord. Amen.

Annamma goes out of the church and answers the call which she knows is from her sister Celinamol. Celinamol is like Janam TV bringing news about some catastrophe. If there’s no catastrophe to report, Janam will create one somewhere like some Tughlaq keeping beef in his fridge or some Sita Devi being love-jihaded by a Mohamad or something like that.

However, what Celinamol says now shocks Annamma in spite of the Jomon’s and Rev Fr Thonnivasathil’s alleluias strumming the cords of her heart. Their brother’s family is going to be on the streets soon as the brother has been unable to repay the loan he took from the cooperative bank. Cooperative banks are like vampires, do you know? They suck. Ask Amit Shah, if you want more details.

“He brought it upon himself, didn’t he?” Annamma asks Celinamol. Their bro who is going to lose his house now is a monstrous character like Satan in Annamma’s moral science framework which has nothing to do with her religion. Celinamol explains to Annamma that their sis-in-law and children will suffer too and something must be done to save them from this hellish situation.

“Alleluia,” says Annamma. “Praise the Lord.” Annamma’s God calls her back to the church. Your brother cannot be more important than God. Especially if he has been nothing more than a wastrel. “Tell him to go to hell,” Annamma says with the certainty that belongs to firm religious believers.

“Learn to forgive,” Rev Fr Thonnivasathil VD is preaching now from his stage. The high decibel music continues to resounds as Annamma returns to the church to pray to her God who lies dead on a cross behind Rev Fr Thonnivasathil VD. Annamma looks at the dead god and feels a spiritual ecstasy in her veins as the night is getting darker outside in spite of the high voltage street lamps on the city’s vast highways and Tughlakabad’s narrow lanes.