The Mystery of Faith
On Easter Monday
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
A Hindu typically has nothing to do on Easter. Good Friday gives an assured long weekend but Easter does not quite have the consumerism-driven appeal of Christmas with its enticements of plum cakes and red-green winter clothing lines. I’m not sure a lot of us even know what Easter is observed for. My father pops a question almost before every non-Hindu festival: Is it happy or sad? Can I wish this foreign client a “Happy <insert festival>” or should I just let it be?
The past few Easters have also hit me with a similar sense of nothingness. But when the Pope died this Monday, the nothingness vanished into something else. It gave way to remembrance.
We proclaim your death, Oh Lord
And profess your resurrection
Until you come again.
I could hear again the singing of the choir, and the unfortunate sharp notes of a staff who somehow always got the microphone during service.
I spent the ages of 4-18 in a convent school run by nuns in beige sarees and white gowns with large crucifix pendants in their long silver chains. One Wednesday each month was reserved for Mass. We would slide out of our chunky black school shoes, line up untidily outside our classrooms, and walk the length of the school to pour into the Jubilee Hall. The primary school children would enter through the backstage and be seated in the front, but still behind the Christian girls, while the high schoolers dragged their feet and sat clumsily at the back, conveniently escaping for bathroom breaks. Jesus watched over us, in a now ironic pale orange robe, from a large wall sculpture below a beautiful blue and yellow glass-stain of the Holy Spirit. But this Jesus was in a deep meditative state. The teachers watched on his behalf, pulling us up when we got callously loud with our mid-service gossip sessions.
The next morning, my mother would scrub the socks vigorously against the bathroom floor to get the dirt out.
I remember the mysticism. I remember the priest arriving in gold-trimmed vestments, walking between two blocks of soon-to-be bored girls, who for one precious moment strained their neck in wonder. Some of the priests spoke in the most wonderful baritone that rung like a bell when they said, Let us pray, somewhere between a chant and a song. Gospels would be read, there was singing, the sermons, and then more singing from the best of the choir.
Shepherd me, O God, beyond my wants,
beyond my fears, from death into life.
The part that stuck me the most was the Communion. The priest would disappear for a bit behind the altar and would emerge again with substances that were formerly bread and wine. They were now the Body and the Blood of God. How did it transform? As the priest held up, somehow, the bread would almost shine, almost ethereally. Maybe it really was the body of Christ. Our Christian friends who had their First Communion would be harangued by questions: What did the bread taste like? Did they actually give you wine? If yes, how does wine taste?
But most of all, I remember the music. When Notre Dame burnt and the crowds in Paris sang Ave Maria, I wept watching the news. I knew the music.
I am now in a secular institution. I sometimes walk around University, imagining how the nuns in my school would change it. The gates would open to a Mother Mary statue. Each classroom would have a small crucifix. Lunch breaks would begin with prayer. Bless us O Lord, and these Thy gifts. Infant Jesus would shepherd us around the corner near the defunct fountain. Christmas would mean singing at the morning assemblies, catching our breath as we counted down and sang, Five gold rings/four calling birds/three french hens…
And Easter? I am not sure. The campus turns hot and windless. Brown leaves are spread over while green ones sprout in their place. It is also the last term for graduating batches. The old is supposed to give way to the new. My friends send me anxious messages about how a papal candidate could be so much worse. I wipe my brow. My bindi melts by the afternoon.
Where are the lilacs breeding out of the dead land?
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