Age of Frenzy

by Mahabaleshwar Sail

  The priest laid a gentle hand on the man’s shoulder.

  ‘I told my daughter that I would wait in the darkness and that she should slip out and join me late at night. She did, Padre bappa, and here, I’ve brought her to you. Take care of her, make her a Christian. Just don’t let her die. I’d have taken her home, but they’d have killed us, her husband’s people would. So would our own people at Shirvaddo. The Solankhes will not cremate a man without throwing his wife into the pyre. We, Nayaks, do not practise sati, but when a daughter is married into the Solankhe clan no one objects to the ritual.’

  ‘Don’t worry about your daughter, I’m responsible for her now. I swear on the blood that Jesus shed on the cross, your daughter will be happy. Not a hair on her head will be harmed.’

  ‘If they ask me, I’ll say I know nothing. Go look in the river or in some well, I’ll say. Take her somewhere far away, Padre bappa, they say you have schools and houses in Goapattana where she’ll be safe.’

  ‘Go home, brother Marto, don’t worry. I’ve given you my word. Remember, everything is in God’s hands. We should be ready to face all troubles, that’s all.’

  The girl clung to her father weeping as he rose to go. The priest drew her away as Marto set off homewards.

  There was a lot of commotion in the Solankhe household as well as in Shirvaddo the next day as everyone looked for the girl. Marto’s family was also in the dark about her whereabouts. That evening the family was forced to cremate the corpse. Padre Simao Peres was quite relieved. The next morning Padre Simao, Tomas and Gunai set off for Goapattana at daybreak. If they heard someone’s footsteps on the way, they’d hide Gunai behind a bush and Tomas would step forward to check, calling out to them when the path was clear.

  The Franciscan priests ran a convent in Goapattana where a few local women were allowed to stay. Since the convent was established for Christian women, Gunai was baptized and given the name Anarit Fernand before she could be admitted there.

  Padre Simao Peres heard about the commotion Shef Camil Ribeir and his men had created after finding the broken cross. He tried to keep away from the controversy, yet three days after the incident a group of villagers came to meet him.

  ‘The soldiers have started their wicked sinful ways. Ours was a peaceful and contented village. Now they are making our lives impossible. They won’t leave us alone. Our gaonki cannot take place, our community lands have been taken away. They beat us and torture us. We don’t know who damaged the cross, we are all suffering for it. You tell them to stop all this. We’ll rebuild the cross, if they want,’ Mungru Shenai said.

  The priest was surprised, but he didn’t show any emotion. ‘Why didn’t you go and tell them all this?’ he asked.

  ‘Do we have the guts to go to them? They only speak with a raised whip. Now their frenzy has increased. They say they’re working for their religion, but there’s no kindness or humanity in them,’ Ventu Nayak declared.

  ‘All right. I’ll talk to them. But I can’t promise anything…’

  ‘They’ll listen to you, they’re your own people,’ the men said dejectedly as they rose to go.

  It was almost evening when the priest, dressed in his long flowing cassock with a heavy crucifix around his neck, arrived at the camp. The shef was standing outside, but he ignored Padre Simao Peres for quite some time. Then he said, ‘Why are you here? What do you want?’ Not waiting for his reply he called out, ‘Padre Colaso, he’s here to see you. Ask him what he wants. You complain about him all the time, now do what you want.’

  Padre Paulo Colaso and Padre Benedit Ferrao emerged from within and stood opposite Padre Simao Peres without a word of greeting, as though ready for a fight. When the two priests first came to this village, they were timid and moved about diffidently. But within eight months, they seemed to have sprouted horns and did as they pleased. They even threatened the shef that they would complain to the viceroy or write to the King if they did not get their way. These were strange times indeed. The entire administrative machinery was being used for the propagation of religion and the King of Portugal, Joav III, and the Viceroy of Goa, Constantin Braganza, threw their entire might behind the clergy in their efforts to convert people to their religion.

  Padre Simao Peres and these two priests had been involved in a bitter quarrel some time ago. According to Portuguese law, a child was declared an orphan when both its parents were dead, and such a child could be baptized and brought into the Christian fold. Some priests in Goa, however, forcibly baptized children who had lost their fathers, but whose mothers were alive.

  Daba Devli, one of the new converts, rewarded with a job and a strip of land, roamed about the village gathering information and reporting to the soldiers. When confronted by the other villagers he would say, ‘We are of the Devli caste, we are illegitimate, we have no fathers in the day and look on no woman as a mother in the night. We don’t worry about right and wrong. If someone offers us food, we go there.’ It was Daba Devli who told the soldiers about Ghantu Kumbhar’s death.

  One day when Ghantu’s wife was sitting with her four-year-old son in her lap, Padre Paulo Colaso and three soldiers came to take custody of the child. ‘A widow has no rights. She gets no share of the property. How can she take care of a child?’ they asked. Somanna Mesta, who was there, rushed to Padre Simao’s shack. ‘They’re snatching that innocent child from his mother’s arms, do something…’ he pleaded. Padre Simao didn’t want to intervene, but the old man was so desperate that he was forced to go along.

  Padre Simao’s imposing personality, his piercing gaze, the mass of grey hair that framed his face, and the aura of quiet wisdom that pervaded his whole being awed everyone who came in touch with him. When he reached Ghantu’s home, the soldiers and Padre Colaso were surprised and angry to see him there. Padre Simao calmly explained the law in detail to them and every time Padre Colaso tried to interrupt, he silenced him up with his arguments. He quoted a similar case in which the upper court had ruled against the priest. Finally, Padre Colaso was forced to withdraw. He walked away quietly with his soldiers, but was seething inside. He was not ignorant of the law. He knew that when a child was baptized, the mother would embrace Christianity too. The child’s siblings would follow soon enough, if only to prevent him from becoming the sole master of the family’s wealth. However such cases rarely reached the courts for everyone knew that even if the judge decided in his favour, the new convert would never be accepted as a Hindu again. But Padre Simao had intervened and exposed Padre Colaso’s motives that day.

  And now Padre Simao was here at the camp again.

  ‘They made a mistake, they didn’t know what they were doing. They’re ignorant villagers, after all. They must have thought that the cross was just a stone structure. Forgive them, in the name of the Lord. Love, compassion and forgiveness are the main tenets of the Bible. If we set these aside, what is the point of spreading our faith?’ he asked.

  ‘Do you mean that we do not follow the teachings of the Bible?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. Perhaps you misinterpret those teachings.’

  Padre Colaso was seething with rage, but he was outwardly calm, trying to confuse Padre Simao with long-winded arguments.

  ‘They destroyed the cross in your area because they knew you’d speak up on their behalf. They wouldn’t have dared to do this elsewhere. And now you say that the cross was merely a stone structure!’

  ‘That is right. Where there is no love, no compassion, a cross is but a stone structure. Without love, God or truth or faith mean nothing. You cannot spread Christianity by simply erecting a stone cross. The cross must be engraved in men’s hearts. Once you touch their hearts, you can erect innumerable stone crosses without any difficulty. You know that many who have been forcibly converted, do not practise Christianity and seek to go back to their old faith. That is why we have had to fall back upon the Inquisition here in Goa.’

  ‘That’s enough, Padre Simao. You have insulted the holy cross. You have s
poken against the Inquisition. Go, now.’

  ‘I haven’t spoken against anyone. I didn’t mean to insult anyone. I came here with a request. Please don’t punish the villagers any more for that broken cross.’

  ‘All right. We won’t ask any more questions. We won’t punish anyone. We won’t do anything. Just go, now.’

  Padre Simao turned away. He was quite surprised. He’d expected them to pounce on him, but they’d accepted his request quietly enough.

  Three men arrived early in the morning and stood by the door of the shack. One had a sword in his hand, the others held batons and a coil of rope. Tomas saw them and turned numb with fear, but he recovered immediately and grabbed his sword.

  ‘I am an officer of the Goa Inquisition. I’ve been sent to fetch Padre Simao Peres,’ the man with the sword declared.

  Padre Simao Peres stared at him in consternation. He appeared calm but his voice was tremulous. ‘Why? What are the charges?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know. You’ll be told when you stand before them in Vhadley Ghar, the Big House.’

  Padre Simao knew all about the power of the Inquisition and the punishment it meted out. Padre Colaso had obviously lodged a complaint against him. There was no point in talking to these junior officials and so he remained silent.

  The officer grabbed the priest’s hands. ‘Come on, tie them up,’ he ordered. Tomas had broken into a cold sweat on hearing that they were from the Inquisition, but he was furious when they set hands on the priest.

  ‘Let me see who dares to touch Padre bappa! Get back, Padre bappa, run away at once! Run far away. The world needs you! You are like Jesus!’ he screamed, brandishing his sword.

  One of the men twirled his baton and brought it down strongly on Tomas’s arm, but Tomas didn’t let go of his sword. He swiped at the man slicing off three of his fingers, forcing him to drop the baton. The official with the sword lunged at Tomas, striking him between his shoulder and his neck. The second blow landed on Tomas’s neck and he fell to the ground. As the priest sank down on his knees, the officials bound him tightly and dragged him away.

  By the time they reached Goapattana, which was sixteen miles away, the sun had begun to set. One man held the rope that bound the priest’s hands and was looped about his waist. The rainy season was over, but the streams were full of water and Padre Simao’s legs and robes were covered with mud and slush. The sweat had dried on his body and the long grey beard was wild and unkempt, making him fearful to behold. People recoiled and moved away when they saw him as he and the soldiers trudged down the street.

  The Big House was a magnificent edifice, a hundred feet wide and over a hundred and fifty feet high. The walls were thick with huge doors and windows. When they entered through the front door, they found themselves in a large hall whose walls were lined with pictures and lists of names of people who had been burnt to death at the last Trial of Faith on the Day of Judgement. Beyond was a doorway where eighteen steps led to a large platform dominated by a massive cross. There was a huge table where the religious heads of the Inquisition would sit, meting out punishments to those accused of being traitors to the faith.

  Everything was quiet and still. The guards and other officials spoke in hushed tones and crept about their duties as though some danger loomed above their heads. Each step was cast in fear, each word was measured as though it could lead to death. This was the case all over the Goan islands. A perception of fear, an unnamed threat weighing people down. No one dared point a finger at the Big House. Death did not come easily within those walls. Solitude and the huge weight of sorrow often killed an inmate long before he was sentenced to death. And even if the prisoner was finally released as being ‘innocent of any crime’, his mind and body were broken and he remained an invalid till the end of his days.

  Padre Simao was overcome with despair when he reached the Big House. Darkness seemed to close in on him and all the trees seemed to shed their leaves. He wanted to shout at the top of his voice, asking the Chief Inquisitor what his crime was, but the desolation and despair all around overpowered his voice. All the features that marked my past, my education, my priesthood, the love I bear will just fall away and these people will bury them turning me into an ordinary criminal, he thought. I will die an ordinary man. My crime is just this, that I interpreted the teachings of the Bible in the right way, I understood what Jesus wanted to say and I tried to win men’s hearts through love. As I stand on the threshold of this prison, I declare that you cannot spread this religion by using force, you will only spoil its reputation. The generations to come will not forgive you for this. You are tarnishing the image of a religion that is pure and founded on the principle of love.

  A guard unlocked the door of a cell and two rats scrambled out. Several big cockroaches crawled up and down the walls and a rancid smell emanated from it. The cell was so tiny that a man could not lie down with his legs stretched out. They shoved the priest in and pulled the door shut. A heavy, foul-smelling mantle of darkness settled all around.

  Tomas’s body lay in a pool of blood outside the shack till late afternoon. He was a Christian and would have to be buried soon. Shef Ribeir arrived with some soldiers and noted details about the injuries on the corpse. He then made a list of the items in the shack. Much of the blood had seeped out of the corpse and it had become quite light by the time they carried it away on a plank. Padre Benedit Ferrao walked silently behind the body, not bothering to utter any prayers. They buried Tomas in the clearing beyond the temple which had now become their graveyard.

  Overpowered by a momentary urge of greed, Tomas had been caught up in unfortunate circumstances that led to his becoming a Christian. Yet, a loyal, straightforward spirit lurked within him. Tomas, the man who stole the cruzado was the same Tomas who had given up his life for the padre.

  Seven days had passed since the cross was demolished. The soldiers found out who the culprits were on the morning of the eighth day.

  Suguna was Raya’s paternal uncle. The two branches of the family were squabbling over a strip of land and were always at each other’s throats. One tends to keep an eye on every move that an enemy makes, so when Shabi and Raya crept away from the festivities at the jagar that evening, Suguna’s curiosity was aroused. He didn’t recognize the third man who stood in the shadows, but this was the moment he’d been waiting for. They grabbed my tract of land. I’ll teach them a lesson now. I’ll force them out of the village, he thought.

  He couldn’t summon up the courage to approach those white-skinned strangers for the first few days, but the fire of hatred burning within forced him on. He went to their camp before daybreak, whispered the names to a native soldier and slipped away.

  When Shef Ribeir and the soldiers got to Shirvaddo, they realized that none of the three men were at home. They’d gone out of Goa to attend a temple festival, the families said. The shef was furious. ‘You’re lying! They’re hiding in the village after destroying the cross. Hand them over or we’ll chop off your heads. We’ll set your houses on fire. Not one of you will remain alive!’ he roared.

  Shef Ribeir sat down on the porch for a while, and when he calmed down, he summoned the elders from the three households. ‘See, this is a heinous crime. If the King of Portugal hears of this, he will send a force to destroy you. But the King stands by the solemn word he has given the people of Goa. If all of you become Christians, this crime will be forgiven. If you want to save your lives, you better convert at once,’ he declared.

  He made a list of the members in each family. There were twenty-one people in all. ‘I give you one day’s time to decide. You must let me know by the day after tomorrow,’ he said, and then leaping on to his horse, he rode away.

  Shabi’s father Jiva, Raya’s father Ganesh and Guna’s father Shiva rushed to the shack in the fields.

  ‘What’s the matter, why are you here all together?’ Guna exclaimed.

  ‘They came. They know that you damaged the cross. They say they’ll kill us all, set
fire to our houses,’ Ganesh blurted out.

  The three young men were silent.

  ‘They took the priest away the other day. Killed his bodyguard, too.’

  ‘That’s wrong. They must be punished,’ Guna exclaimed.

  ‘Haven’t you had enough of doling out punishments?’ his father fumed. ‘They want us to become Christians. Everything will be forgiven, they say. Otherwise they’ll kill us and set fire to our homes. What do you say, shall we become Christians?’

  ‘No! No!’ the three men screamed.

  ‘What shall we do then?’

  ‘Bappa, Jiva dada, Ganesh dada, what do you say? Do you want to become Christians?’ Guna asked the three old men.

  They were silent for a while in deep thought. Finally Ganesh said, ‘How can anyone give up his own faith and take up another’s? How can one commit such a sin?’

  ‘Exactly! Who knows what their religion is all about! What they eat, what they don’t eat … the womenfolk will be inconsolable!’

  ‘Sukhdo joined their faith, but he’s a troubled man. His house isn’t a home any more – no offerings, no rituals for the ancestors on Amavas or Punav. They don’t allow you to observe any old customs it seems,’ Jiva said in a worried tone.

  ‘That’s it, then. It’s final. We’ll leave the village.’

  ‘Leave the village?’ Ganesh was almost in tears. All their faces were clouded by grief.

  ‘There’s no other way, Ganesh dada. The whole village will have to convert, no one can escape that fate. Stay here and become a Christian. Or leave.’

  ‘God knows who drove the stakes into the ground and set up this village. Who knows how many generations have lived here since then! We’ll have to forsake our gods and leave…’ Jiva began to weep and tears rushed from the other men’s eyes too.