EXTRACTS

The Scent of the Other Side

At dawn, when the chapel bell rang in the convent, Margalitha took off her veil and under-veil. It did not bring on a storm, a pestilence or an earthquake. She stood looking at the clothes of holiness strewn on the floor, but felt nothing. After all, what did clothes add up to? Did a vocation lie in the cloth?

Margalitha stepped out of the cloth-scheme of things. With a deep sigh, she managed to open the door and walk out into the wider world...

*

‘She should be sent out right now. This moment! Ask her to leave.’ The crowd, men and women alike, leered at her, taking advantage of the rare opportunity to see the curves of nun’s body out of the habit. Was this the stuff inside! Through a path between sixty eyes that watched her unblinking, she walked half the distance on her way out.

Midway, Yohannan Kasseessa stopped her. ‘Karikkan has entrusted this responsibility to me. Don’t leave until he comes’.

Margalitha raised her head and looked at Kasseessa. She said gently. ‘I am responsible for myself’.

Kasseessa stopped aside and let her go.

*

When he saw Karikkan, the proprietor of P&R Wholesale and Retail stores stepped out into the street to welcome the priest. ‘Achen, why are you standing there?’

He dusted the chair and invited Achen to sit down… As Karikkan Achen in his spotless white cassock, sat amidst the rumble of life in a cushioned chair under a whirring fan, mentally he felt the weight of every sack of rice that fell on his father’s back…

On seeing his father, Karikkan rose from his seat respectfully. The sight of the ragged, soiled country towel on his father’s shoulder hurt him sharply…

Karikkan noticed how his father’s face glowed as he was told of the Episcopal Order and his appointment to the new responsibility effective a week from that day. A fire of anxiety began to blaze within Karikkan.

He could feel how his father’s chest swelled with pride as he walked with him through Nayarangadi. At the point of parting, his father said: ‘Just wait. Your mother is going to make offerings to a hundred churches. When she hears this she will jump for joy.’

‘Please tell mother that I’ll come and see her.’ Karikkan took his father’s hand. Timidly and with some hesitation, his father advised him. ‘Help the poor. Do not forsake the homeless. Stand with those who struggle and suffer.’

*

Even though Margalitha had slid into sleep in the course of her reverie, she still sensed Augustine entering the room. He was returning after a bath... He took off his wet clothes, wore a dhoti and sleeveless cassock and went out to hang up his wet clothes to dry. Returning he spread his mat, knelt on it and prayed... Snuffing out the light, he stretched himself on the mat. Margalitha held her breath. She was afraid of the darkness in the room.

‘Margalitha!’ Augustine called from the darkness.

Margalitha shuddered.

‘Are you afraid of men?’

‘No.’

‘Good’.

*

‘Da, aren’t you the son of that Theredya?’

The request that he too be allowed to receive Communion died on his quivering lips. Daniel Achen’s question and tone alike hurt Manikyan. ‘My mother’s name is Thresia.’

‘Pha! You upstart! Thresia? Since when has a convert started calling herself Thresia?’

As Manikyan was about to go up the flight of steps with the other children for their first Communion, the Vicar stopped him. ‘You just wait there. Don’t come up and pollute the place.’

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