The unbeliever

Apparently the first person to publicly deny any inclination toward religious beliefs might just be a robber.

It so happens that, a long long time ago in a village far far away, there were a village full of very religious people. Every holy day they would convene in the only religious building, which so happens to accommodate their numbers perfectly. The whole day, they would renew, reaffirm, and express their faith.

Every one of them — from the smallest of children to the oldest of the living — would leave whatever it was they were doing and go to this gathering. The children dropped their toys in the middle of the road and ran home to get into their best clothes. Travellers stopped. The shopkeepers closed their shops, the looms stood unattended, the farmers sent up an extra prayer so that their cattle did not stray too far from the farm as the masters went to such gatherings.

So. Every one of them. Except one. Of course he did not lie and would never, for the life of him, say, “Oh I am sick” or “Oh I’m allergic” because whatever flaws the villagers had, they were not liars. In fact, they were very honest people.

So, this one person, every holy day, would leave a note on his house door, explaining why he could not be at the religious gathering. “Gone out,” the note said. “At heist.”

Know them well

The problem of not being able to memorise faces could be disastrous sometimes. Last night, during the completion of the first part of the Thursday Vigil, I stood in the church’s courtyard waiting for my friends. We were supposed to head home together. From the church’s doors, a familiar figure stepped out. He was wearing a batik shirt and looked utterly familiar.

I said to a friend who was looking elsewhere, ”He looked familiar…I’ve seen him around the church.”

My friend nodded politely, but continued her animated conversation with a lady next to her. “No, really.”

Finally it dawned to me and I exclaimed loudly to her, “He’s the Bishop!” just as the Bishop (who was also the Cardinal) stood in front of me.

It was one of the oddest moments as I stuttered and shook his hands, “Good evening, Mister… uh… Sir… Father… uh… Monseigneur… uh…”

But he was nice enough to pat me on my head and smiled as if to say, “You silly, silly woman.”

Never again.

The Rituals of Palm Sunday

So, earlier this morning we stood in our pews and waited for the holy water to be dispensed (vigorously shook out) from the aspergillum and land on our palm fronds. This year, the whole ritual went without much glitch. A few years ago, too vigorous shaking sent the end of the aspergillus flying toward an unsuspecting church-goer, who really tried his best not to panic and maintain a calm, contemplative dignity as demanded by such a solemn procession.

“Our church isn’t a very big one, right,” a friend said as we sat under a sawo kecik tree after the mass. “So, I guess it wouldn’t be hard to shake an aspergillus about. But I wonder how strong a shake should be done in Vatican… I mean, it’s a large place.”

But obviously not one of us have been to Vatican or have seen a Palm Sunday service in the St. Peter’s. So, there were much shrugging and shaking of heads. And there was a short period of silence.

“Maybe they used a holy waterhose, or a holy watercannon,” a helpful friend piped up to break the silence.

Until now, I can’t quite reconcile the image of a priest walking around blessing coils of waterhoses or lines of watercannons placed strategically around Vatican.

Or the fact that one video-gaming nut friend pondered how a Holy Waterhose could be, “a name of a secret and very powerful weapon alongside the Holy Sword or the Holy Polearm…” you know, like Castlevania or Final Fantasy of sorts.

I hope that the Big Guy upstairs is in one of His forgiving mood and decided that I would not be spared and not smitten by a bolt of lightning where I stand.

When life handed you lemons

Of course there’d be people who, instead of making lemonades and selling them a dime a cup, would rather engineer it and somehow make whole lemon groves in their small backyard.

In an environmentally friendly way, of course. Organically, most definitely.

Laptop-buying protocols

“I found this really wonderful laptop case,” she said, quickly delving into a whole essay on beautiful and wonderful.

“Great,” was the only word we managed to slip into the entire stream of one-sided conversation.

“So,” finally she said, “I was thinking,” which could only mean disaster, “I should go buy a laptop to go into it…”

And midway a whole travel-catalogue worth of plans to visit the ‘computer place’ we knew that it would be easy. There’s supposed to be a standard governing the perfect symbiosis between laptops and their bags.