This is the second part of the story...
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Mum and I were going to go to Maria’s house in the morning! Wow, it had been ages…
“Okay, Ravi. If you decide to be a good boy tonight we will go to meet Maria tomorrow… and you can stay there the entire day!”
Mum’s eyes were still watery but she was so much more cheerful. Wow, she would take me to Maria! It would be so enjoyable!
I had discussed so much about Maria with Eileen. We had always enjoyed talking about people and this was the best topic we could think of…
“Hey Eileen… Isn’t it so quiet out there? Everyone seems to be concentrating hard. They always have their eyes closed. You must have seen them.”
“Oh yes, of course I have! But I think you missed a lot. I think you should go there once again… and look more carefully this time.”
I thought about it the entire night. I could vaguely remember the last time we had been to see Maria. She looked so beautiful on those glass walls of that big building. I think they called it the Church. It had been ages since we had been to that place. It was so huge! They had these huge yellow walls rising up and then ending in a cone. The walls were beautifully ornate. They reminded me of the gardens except that everything was yellow out here… the leaves, the fruits and even some people! Then as we entered we saw a huge hall. It was filled with rows of chairs. Right in front of us was a podium where people would go one by one and bow before a big glass panel.
It was this glass panel that attracted me the most! It had a lot of painted patterns on it that my Mum told me was Maria… well, she indeed was beautiful…
Visiting Maria had always been fun, not only to see those patterns but also to look at people and see what they were doing. It was just so very different from any other place…
“Get up or we will be late… wake up!”
The house seemed so much larger than I had imagined seeing last time! People were entering the place in huge numbers. Mum said we had to buy some flowers before we could enter and so we went towards the flower shop…
“How much is this bouquet for?” A young man probably twenty-five was buying a bouquet of yellow roses from the shopkeeper. He looked pretty dynamic – as if there was something that made him hurry. His constant shaking of his hands really amused me!
“Sir, I will give it to you for a special price! Five dollars…” The shopkeeper was a small man. He had a huge smile on his face that seemed to spread over his entire face! It was a different matter that he did look very weak and those wrinkles around his eyes made him look very old.
“Give it for four if you want to”, the young man said firmly.
“But… okay sir. It’s all yours…”
Mum took a small bouquet of dahlias and then we entered the Church. We went to one of those long rows of seats at the back and sat down quietly. Everyone was looking in front towards a pulpit right in front of those glasses, as if expecting something to happen. This went on for the next ten minutes. People kept entering and secured their places…
A family entered. The father walked ahead – flowers in hand. The mother followed with a child on either side. She was looking down and had her eyes half-closed. The kids were admiring the interiors of the building with wide open eyes and giggling as they followed their father. Then an old man entered. He was stooping down as he walked past. He was extremely weak. His clothes were very dirty and his face was wrinkled. He was holding a white rose in his hand and he was looking at it through gleaming eyes! He seemed very happy to me – he seemed to be someone who had achieved something.
Now this was the interesting part I guess. There was this lady who had just entered the hall. She was dressed in pure white, holding a big purse in one hand and a candle in the other. She had an odd air around her. She walked in big strides right towards the pulpit and kept the candle on the table. She then knelt down and folded her hands. Everyone seemed to be looking at her. She stayed like that for the next five minutes. Then she got up and went to sit in a stool in front. She suddenly looked so different to me. That big smile of hers had suddenly vanished. She looked so much more sober now! What had happened when she knelt? Had Maria told her something? Could she speak? I was reminded of Eileen – “… you should go there once again… and look more carefully this time…”
This really was much stranger a place than I had imagined before. Suddenly everyone seemed to focus their attention on a person who had just walked to the pulpit.
“Look Ravi, he is the Father. Listen carefully to what he says…”
“We have assembled this morning to submit ourselves to God. We have come here to rid ourselves of our worries and think about Him. We have come here to wash ourselves of our sins that we have collected through our immoral acts. We have come here to remember Him who sacrificed His life to purify ours. Let us bow our heads and think about Him and pray to Him that He may continue to walk with us on the sands of time…”
I looked around. Everyone suddenly bowed there heads down, even Mum. The Church suddenly looked so different. It suddenly became so quiet. The man on the pulpit was still looking in front. He was holding a cross in one hand and seemed to be reading something from a book that was kept in front of him. I was instantly reminded of our English class! Everyone in our class was so quiet during Mr. Samuel’s presence. He was such a strict teacher. Everyone feared him so much! The moment he would leave the class everyone would heave a sigh of relief and life would return back to normal…
One by one the people opened their eyes. They walked up to the pulpit and laid their bouquets over there. They bowed before the glass walls and then went towards the exit.
“Come on Ravi. We have to move now. Everyone’s leaving. The mass is over…”
We moved out of the Church as well. Oh my God! Everything seemed so startlingly different over here! Everyone seemed in so much hurry!
I remembered Eileen again – “… Time is of the essence. People need to work in order to live! You can’t be sitting all day imagining stuff…”
You know what; I was beginning to feel that there was something that I was missing somewhere. It seemed clear to me that once you grew big there would always be something that would keep bothering you. Everyone seemed to be doing everything, yet I felt that there was something about the things being “done” that made them look odd…
“People often feel the obligation to do certain things…” Eileen had said.
“What is ‘obli..g..’?”
“Obligation, Ravi. People are often forced to do things to satisfy themselves even when the real purpose of having done that has been lost…”
Eileen had begun to say quite complicated things these days. However it was always fun to talk to her. Maybe life was not as easy as I had thought it was. Maybe it was necessary to make some things complicated in order to make sense out of them. It was probably necessary to delve into complicated acts just to make your life a bit more “purposeful”. I suddenly felt so small – as if I still needed to know a lot. There was so much I couldn’t explain. Come to think of it – I still couldn’t explain my mother’s tears over my Dad’s photograph…