As Pinto told it, there were two theories about how the earlier converts got their Portuguese names: either that they were given the names of the Parish priests themselves or the names of the noblemen who ‘sponsored’ the conversion. Why the need for a change of name? Because the missionaries saw Christianity as a religion of Universal Brotherhood with no caste system and, to this day, names so clearly indicate caste affiliations.
I couldn’t agree more. You couldn’t get more Brahmin than a ‘Prabhu’, which was what Fernandes’s original Hindu surname was. ‘The only thing vaguely firangi about us is our names,’ Pinto explained. ‘We are otherwise one hundred per cent sons of the soil. Take a visit to the coastal villages of Udipi (the home of the fast food idli dosa and the Syndicate Bank) in South Kanara or to the backwaters of Kerala. You’ll see young Christian girls in sarees and old men in dhotis. Don’t judge us by what you see in the Hindi movies. That couldn’t be further from the truth.’
I felt a little embarrassed. While he spoke I had been looking for that telltale sign of Bollywood Christianity – the metal cross hanging prominently from a chain around the neck of ‘D’Souza’ or ‘Fernandes’. I was looking for the amiable drunken fisherman father of the late Raj Kapoor’s Bobby – with his heart in the Heavens and his brains in his booze. Or perhaps the ‘Ajit’ sidekick, ever ready to tango in the background or respond with the inimitable: ‘Yes, Baas!’
My friend cut in cynically: ‘That’s Bollywood for you. The only cross we Christians bear is the one which has labeled us foreigners in our own country. How come we have to keep justifying our existence here when our roots go back even further than the British in India?’ My friend had a point. It really was a bit much how these khaki shorts types piled on to the Christians and demanded that their missionary schools be closed down. What are we to do when these fellows say: Praise the sants but damn the saints?
As Chachi rounded the bend and neared the Boat Club we ran into a police barrier. Normally I would have been delighted. But this was a free ride – so nothing to be pleased about. I looked at Pinto’s agitated Adam’s apple and I remembered Fr. Ignatius of Mission School, Etawah. I suddenly pictured my old school master − with snuff box and off-white cassock, old with washing and ink stains − telling me to say ten ‘Our Fathers’ for every sin I had committed. A feeling of piety swept over me and I went all soft inside.
Chachi burped gently and ground to a halt. Not that screeching she usually does when she disapproves of my passenger. Suddenly someone tapped at the front left window. It was a handsome middle-aged man in a freshly ironed safari suit with a fake leather pouch hanging from his left arm. Where were we going? Could we drop him off at the Gol Dak Khana?
Talk about coincidences! I hesitated but Pinto insisted. He stepped out and crowded into the back, allowing the man to enter. Suddenly the traffic jam lifted. I started the engine and Chachi, to my surprise, screeched. The signal was clear. Chachi was trying to tell me something – this was no friend of ours. My meter went up.
I asked my savari: ‘What was that Boat Club agitation about? Were you part of it?’
‘Not for me these pointless dharnas,’ he said. ‘But I thoroughly approve the thrust of the agitation. It’s time these Christians were taught a lesson. What do they think they are – foreigners with foreign gods, looking to Rome for instructions!’ I glanced in the rear view mirror and saw Mary, all this time silent, cringe in the corner. And I thought of Fr. Ignatius’s impeccable Hindi and his faded cassock and ink stains. And my blood started to boil.
‘First it was the Muslims, with their four wives and their Personal Code. Now it’s these Christians, with their obstinate attitude to family planning. Are we to be overrun by them as well?’ Obviously he saw me as his own kind – thanks to the garlanded print of Goddess Lakshmi that the little lady insists I carry in the taxi.
We finally reached the Gol Dak Khana. None too soon, I should say. Chachi viciously grated to a halt and belched loudly. Our savari had set the right tone for Pinto’s Good Friday services.
Imagine then my surprise. Trotting immediately behind Pinto was our safari suitor. I tried to start Chachi up again but she coughed and wheezed and refused to comply. She seemed to want me to wait.
I was soon to see why.
The man had started to fold his hands and wheedle. ‘What would we do without the contribution of such illustrious Christians schools such as yours, hon’ble padre? I tell all my friends and neighbours that yours are the best examples of morality and education. As you know my older child already studies with you. If you could find in your heart some Christian charity to accommodate our little one in your nursery school then we would all be so blessed .…’
The object of this distinct sycophancy heard him out patiently. Did I see sorrow on his face? Or perhaps it was my imagination that heard the man, clad in off-white cassock, old with washing and ink stains, say: ‘Father forgive him, for he knows not what he does.’
6
MANDIR MANIPULATIONS
AS THE LAST STRAND OF THAT MEMORY FLASHED ACROSS MY mind a sort of peace descended upon us. Collectively. And in that hazy glow of piety I thought even the sumo wrestlers started to look humane.
Till Bablu whispered to me to look again.
Before my very own eyes Pimple No. 1 had started to grow horns and from the tight confines of Pimple No. 2’s fake Levis jeans (labeled ‘Lewis’) a strange hairy tail started to emerge. And as they descended to scratching themselves in places that made Bablu’s mother blush, they earned their third and final black mark.
‘Arre bhai saheb, this religion-veligion business is all a racket. Look at what our own sants and sadhus are doing. Instead of praying for our sins they are the biggest sinners. Look at these saffron clads who are in politics – especially that Sakshi Maharaj fellow from your neck of the woods. Is he any less of a goonda and badmash as your average dacoit?’
‘Tauba! Tauba! Enough is enough,’ shouted Bablu ki Ma as she looked around for the well-worn belan. ‘First you burn our Sikh friends. Then you try to justify burning of innocent Christian children. And now you denigrate our own holy men!’ And as the belan swung from side to side I saw all chances of getting a ‘good deal’ out of Chachi go out of the window. Our car cannibals were too busy doing a patli gali on me. Trying to escape.
Now, for once, I couldn’t have agreed more with the greasy youth. Indeed the kind of saffron element that has entered politics of late was giving the religion a bad name. And, in fact, Bablu ki Ma has, in the past, herself had some very rude words to say about that former so-called sadhu turned MP from Farrukhabad. But this mixing religion with politics has always been a most sensitive topic for my devout wife. One of the few subjects on which she has ever raised her voice against me in anger.
There’s a background to this. Around 15 years ago, on the advise of one of my regular savaris − one of those neta types − I changed my taxi route to take in the area outside the Hanuman Mandir on Baba Kharak Singh Marg every Tuesday evening. Bablu initially tagged along saying it was a ‘great place to eat chaat’, which, needless to say, earned him great displeasure from his mother. My pious wife, on the other hand, looked on me with great favour. Temporarily. For, unfortunately, she soon found out why I went there every week.
You see I had this on-going deal with one of my regular politician savaris. From 8 p.m. to 11.45 p.m. every Tuesday I was to park Chachi by a public telephone booth within sight of the mandir. The minute I spotted a VVIP politician approaching, a call was to be put through to my friend’s newly acquired Nokia cellular phone. The man, whose car would be parked just a stone’s throw away in the Connaught Place area, would drive up within five minutes. And − oh what a coincidence! − run into the VVIP ‘target’. A long sought appointment would finally be secured. Or a favour asked. Return promises made. The gods came in very useful.
It first started with simple things like gas connections and telephones. My friend, who had been at the game for seve
ral years, was, by the time I got into the ‘racket’, on to the big time. He was aiming for an entire gas agency and/or a petrol pump. Meanwhile, he was always in the market for a government-sponsored jaunt abroad. Or perhaps a directorship of a nationalized bank. Or the chairmanship of a government corporation.
Gurcharan Singh did, and still does, similar duty outside the Devi ka Mandir at Chhatarpur near Mehrauli. The changes in the place over the last 25 years are mind-boggling. The original mandir has been around for years but was really ‘discovered’ in the early 1980s when word spread that the then prime minister, (now late) Smt. Indira Gandhi, was a frequent visitor. Just a few miles up the road, in the shadow of the Qutub Minar, is the Yog Maya Mandir, with the tomb of Khwaja Bhaktiyar Kaki right next to it. Pucca Dillli-wallahs know this as the spot from where the famous Phool Walon ki Sair begins each year. But favour seekers believe it to be a place guaranteed to answer your prayers.
I remember the day when the little lady caught me out. Gurcharan and I were laughing about the desperation with which politicians pray to the gods for changes in their future. Gurcharan started to rattle off a long list of recognizable people who did the trip each week. ‘The gods come in very useful to people like us,’ he laughed. ‘Especially when the meter is running!’
‘Tauba! Tauba,’ the little lady had exclaimed. ‘Do you have to be so cynical? Why not believe that these are just god-fearing people?’ She shook her head furiously when I started to disagree. ‘You, of all people, have no business to disbelieve!’ she said. ‘Just how do you think we got Bablu?’ Well, I did think we got our son the ‘usual’ way, after doing the ‘usual’ thing, but his mother wasn’t in a mood to listen. It was the power of Fatehpur Sikri and the omnipresent blessings of the spirit of the Sufi saint, Sheikh Salim Chisti, she insisted. ‘Don’t you remember those repeated trips in Chachi (then newly acquired)? Not everyone goes to the gods for political favours,’ she insisted.
A glow came over her face as she told us of the Apa Ganga Ghar Shivalaya, (better known as the Gauri Shankar Mandir) to which she still goes on Mondays. Though the temple, which is perhaps the oldest in the capital, is mainly a Shiv/Parvati temple, it also houses a Ram Durbar and shrines to most of the revered gods and goddesses in the Hindu pantheon. Tuesday is the day of Lord Hanuman. And no, not all Hanuman mandirs are haunts of political opportunists, the little lady declared. Did I know that devotees queued up, from as early as 4.30am and throughout the day each Tuesday, at the temple of Hanumanji Marghatwale, located opposite Nigambodh Ghat?
Surely I must have heard of the Durga Ma Amba Mandir at Kalkaji, to which people flock everyday, but especially during the days of Durga Puja and the Navratras? Was I suggesting that some hanky panky, hera pheri went on there too?
I retreated, in language Chachi would understand, with my meter down. The little lady’s innocence constantly both touches and worries me. Surely she is aware of what people have been doing in the name of religion? My politician friend making his contacts and contracts outside the Hanuman Mandir is child’s play before the larger games politicians and political parties have been playing with people’s lives in the name of religion.
Wasn’t it in the name of religion that countless Sikhs, so many of them my brother taxi wallahs, had suffered drastically in the aftermath of the most heinous assassination of Indira Gandhi? Can I ever forget the gruesome sight of those four burnt bodies – once friends and companions? Wasn’t it in the name of religion that, over a period of 10 years, my friend Akbar Pasha has lost countless members of his community in riots in Meerut and Malliana and Moradabad and Ahmedabad and Bombay and Bhiwandi? And wasn’t it in the name of religion that so many thousands of families have had to flee the Kashmir Valley?
‘Do you remember…?’ I started to ask the little lady, that particular memory bringing me back to the present with a crash. I did not need to complete the sentence. She remembered. And I know she still has, wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine, a red dupatta of the finest zardozi – incomplete because the hand that embroidered it had belonged to a girl of the ‘wrong’ religion ….
Who is to judge what is right and what is wrong? Isn’t religion supposed to be a matter of private reflection? Since when did Lord Ram ride around in a converted Toyota mobile? And in which scripture was it written that his standard into battle was a saffron lotus?
Bablu, who had been listening avidly while I reminded his mother about that sad incident, suddenly intervened. ‘This is the trouble about being uneducated,’ he said. Now, ordinarily, I would have taken up my chappal and whacked him for his insolence. But my DPS-educated son seemed to have a point. As he put it: there was the so-called great United States of America – glorying in its less than 400 years of existence. And here we were, basking in the reflected glory of a long lost Indus Valley Civilization, and not even blinking an eye when our own people callously destroyed the 450-year-old Babri Masjid. And there were some of our misguided neighbours retaliating by destroying equally ancient temples in Bangladesh and Pakistan
What a waste! What had we come to?
My reflective mood, however, did not last long. Imagine the coincidence – just then walked in a prospective savari. Seeing Chachi in a shambles he turned to Gurcharan and asked for a ‘Tyota gaddi’. Gurcharan handed over the keys of the new Toyota (yet to be named) we had just added to our taxi fleet and asked me to make myself useful. As we drove out, my savari asked why I looked so pained. I explained briefly. He said, ‘Don’t worry, my political party is supporting legislation to ban the use, and misuse, of religion to further one’s politics. Your troubles will soon be over.’
He paused for a breath and then added, ‘Of course I am not one to pass judgment on this issue. Religion is not the only problem in my political constituency. My problem is caste. It’s bad enough being defeated by Lord Ram. But being dictated to by Lord Mulayam and Devi Mayawati is just too much!’
But did he believe that religion had a place in politics? ‘Those chappies who are misusing religion are in for a shock,’ he said, spewing a perfect line of paan juice out of the taxi’s rear window. ‘Ultimately it’s your hard work and personal contact with the people and not the gods that will pay off in politics. And ordinary folk are not as stupid as we political people think they are. They will see through all the manipulations of these religion-using netas. And I don’t just mean the Muslim political mullahs. These Hindu fundamentalists are just as bad.’
I was quite impressed by the man’s rationality and impartiality. ‘Where to?’ I asked.
‘Maharani Bagh,’ he replied. ‘But first a short stop.’ My admiration began to falter when I found his ‘short stop’ was just a stone’s throw away – at the temple of the nine planets, Navgraha Mandir. ‘Oh, I don’t really believe in all this,’ he sheepishly said. ‘I’m a very rational man. But the big man who has to take the decisions about my political future is not. And I’m told that Saturn is placed strongly against me. Why take the risk?’ Risk on what? I wondered. I was intrigued. Till my eye caught a headline in the Jansatta, which translated ‘Cabinet reshuffle expected next week …’
7
PANCHVATI PERVERTED
ONE GOOD FALLOUT OF BABLU KI MA’S BELAN BASHING, AND the resultant quick exit of the Pimple pair, was that Dadu agreed to forgive me. Or at least that’s what I thought when he and my respected Mataji arrived the next morning on the Kalindi Express (running five hours late, as usual.) Dadu tucked in his dhoti a little tighter and even offered to help me put Chachi back together again.
‘I knew you would reconsider,’ he said, while Ma beamed in toothless, guileless approval. ‘The truth is, Dadu…’ I started to say till I caught a glimpse of Bablu frantically signaling me to change the topic.
‘What’s up here?’ I thought, especially having observed that Dadu had forgiven his grandson’s earlier callous suggestion to have Chachi ‘junked’. I didn’t take long to discover the truth of the situation. My matlabi son was up to some devious
scheme – usually to further his own interest – and Dadu was ‘imported’ here to put the pressure on me. Now suddenly it was okay to put Chachi back together again because Bablu, the little rotter, needed to go on holiday and Chachi would come in useful.
What with my preoccupation with recycling Chachi and looking out for some new vehicle to replace her, I had had no time to even think of taking the family on a holiday and Bablu, having himself suggested that Chachi be ‘junked’ was caught in a cleft stick. School would soon reopen. Everyone in his class would come back with fabulous stories about holidays. What story would he tell?
It seems Pradeep, the local halwai’s son, had gone to Vaishno Devi with a group of his cousins and their parents. Ashok, the local MP’s son, had accompanied his father to New York on some semi-government-sponsored jaunt. Pinky and Sweety, the NRI Kapoor twin boys, had written from Southall, UK, where they were visiting ‘Grandmom’ and ‘Grandpop’. Harish Srivastava, Bablu’s second best buddy and bureaucrat’s bachcha, had gone on the school-arranged expedition to Singapore.
In the face of this formidable run-up Bablu was sorely afraid of losing face and seriously upset with me for not saving his honour. No, he would not count that brief trip to visit Dadu in Etawah. ‘That was more for you to survey the potato crop than for me to take a holiday,’ he complained.
Travails with Chachi Page 4