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2,000 words

Save Our Souls

The man was emaciated beyond imagination. Father Joseph Andrews used to think that in his three years in the hinterland of central India, he had seen the worst that poverty and social cruelty could inflict upon a man. But the man who crouched at his doorstep challenged that belief. He was naked save for a dirty brown loincloth. His arms and legs were unbelievably thin like the uncovered limbs of a scarecrow; his ribs showed as clearly as if one were looking at an X-ray image.

“Father!” he cried.

So the man had heard about him and that he was to be addressed as Father. Father Andrews rose wearily from his interrupted rest and went to the door.

“Father,” the man said again, “they said you would give a bag of rice. If I… if I stood in the river with you.”

Father Andrews sighed. “It is not for standing in the river. It is for the salvation of your soul. So that you are set on the true path and can be saved. So that you will have the love and compassion of Jesus.”

The man gaped.

“Do you want to be saved?” Father Andrews asked, impatient.

“Will I get a bag of rice?”

Father Andrews sighed deeper. “Come.” He picked up his Bible and went out without bothering to lock the door. There was nothing worth stealing in his house. The man followed silently a few yards behind.

In the twilit, unreal time of the day, as he walked, Father Andrews wondered why did he bother. That his calling would be a life devoted to God had never been in doubt. But the profound questions of theology that had held him in thraldom had made sense only in England. Here in India, there was something more fundamental at stake; the differences and similarities among Anglicans, Baptists and Catholics did not matter-what mattered was a bag of rice.

He wished he could have given the wretched man the bag of rice he wanted and be done with him. Indeed, that would be the wiser and safer course, rather than leading him down to the river to baptise him first. Father Ashok, based in the neighbouring district, had told him two weeks ago of the threats he had received from the upper caste villagers who were alarmed at, and held the missionaries responsible for the dwindling numbers in their fiefdoms. He had failed to heed his own cautionary words, however; one week later as he returned alone from a water baptism, he was waylaid and beaten cruelly, ending up with a broken arm and leg.

Conflicting thoughts assailed Father Andrews as he quickened his step along the sandy path to the river bank. The activity was fraught with danger but had to be done. He had a register concealed at home (as he knew the other missionaries also had, though they didn’t talk about it), which had an entry for every soul he had saved, coded such that only he could understand. The more marks in the register, the more successful he had been in spreading the word, and the more funds he would get towards the benefit of the villages he tended.

Sometimes he found the whole process distasteful. It was a heathen land and the people’s souls had to be saved-these were facts he did not question. The first time he saw a worn out carving embossed on a stone slab at the foot of a tree being appeased through flowers and incense and vermilion paste, he had shuddered. What was frustrating was that when he talked to the people about Jesus and the true God, they accepted his words without a murmur. And the next day, the picture of Jesus he had given them would join the pantheon of multi-headed and multi-armed deities on their shelves. Did it then make sense to consider them born again when they had clearly not understood the meaning of the true way?

Father Andrew’s long and brisk strides had taken him quickly to the river but the man had fallen behind, unable to keep pace with him. Father Andrews waited impatiently for him to catch up. He felt he was guilty of impatience in dealing with the people who came to him. He despaired to shake them out of their cloud of meek acceptance of all the indignities and poverty thrust upon them by the higher castes; to kindle their senses that were benumbed by the ill-treatment taken by generations as their inheritance.

He admired Father Ashok’s patience, but then Father Ashok was a local-he understood the mindset of the people and knew how to treat and talk to them. He, Father Andrews, was an outsider, aware that his white skin and brown hair and blue eyes, more than his words, were responsible for attracting the curious. At first, he had needed an interpreter, which introduced an extra layer of separation between him and his audience. He had been learning, however, and three years later had come to terms with the fact that the yoke of centuries could not be shrugged off in a matter of days. But he could never be as much at ease with that learning as Father Ashok could. Father Ashok, he remembered suddenly as he reached the edge of the river, at that moment would be lying in hospital cocooned in plaster of Paris.

The thought made Father Andrews turn back and beckon the man to him urgently. The placid surface of the river, opaque grey in the vanishing twilight, stretched out at his feet. The tranquillity of the scene seemed deceptive to him. It could be a cruel place. Beneath the surface calm of the land and its people, there lurked a vicious, merciless streak. Father Andrews shivered. It was turning dark; he would have to hurry. The man reached him at last and stood beside him, waiting.

“Come,” Father Andrews said. Stepping out of his slippers, he put his hand across the man’s shoulder and pushed him along gently into the water.

The river was not perennial. Its width and depth varied with the rains; in mid-summer, it was no more than a large pond. It was more impressive than that now, but they still would have to wade some distance before standing waist-deep in it.

What was waist-deep to him, Father Andrews realised, would be chest-high to the man. He had not spoken a word after asking for the bag of rice at his house. It was obvious he didn’t know what was coming, yet he would go wherever he was led. Father Andrews was touched by the implicit trust. He stopped. The water was high enough. He looked behind nervously but there was no one to be seen at the bank.

Father Andrews wondered if he should try to explain the liturgy of baptism to him. By rights, he should, but what would the man make of the symbolic significance of immersion, submersion and emergence? Father Andrews struggled with the translations for the words, although he had gone through it a number of times before. And each time he had had the feeling that it wasn’t right: it wasn’t in the true spirit where one understood and accepted Jesus as one’s saviour.

Losing patience suddenly, he stopped midway in his explanation. “Duck!” he yelled, and grabbing the man by the shoulder, pushed him down. He went under, eyes wide with fright, but without a struggle. He had no idea of Father Andrew’s intention, yet he had let himself be dunked underwater. The frail shoulder shook in Father Andrew’s grip. They gave you lordship over their body and soul so easily, Father Andrews thought, that it was tough not to feel heady with your power. He was seized by disgust at himself, at the man, at the upper-caste villagers.

But he had to go through it. It meant one more coded entry in his concealed register, some more funds in his hands to help those who came to him, which was the only way he could hope to free them from their mental bondage and lead them to the true God.

The first stone hit him in the middle of his back. The pain was so sharp and unexpected that the Bible dropped from his other hand. As he scrambled to retrieve it before it sank forever, a second struck his shoulder. It was then that he looked towards the bank and saw the men in an ominous huddle. They yelled at him to return.

There was no choice. If he refused, they would fling more stones at him; his white cassock made him an easy target even in the growing darkness. How long could he stay mid-river, anyway? And he could not endanger the wretched man who had trusted in him and who now cowered behind his body.

He moved slowly, his drenched cassock dragging at his steps. As he came closer, the group resolved into five men. They had tied the end of their turbans across their faces, masking them below the eyes. All carried lathis-stout bamboo sticks that stood as tall as them-symbols of power the upper-caste men wielded. Father Andrews tried to suppress his fear as he reached dry land and came up to them.

He read the intent in their angry eyes and knew there was no use talking. And they knew he knew. Yet, his unspoken confidence, his alien stature, balked them.

“What were you doing?” one of them asked.

There was no answer that would satisfy them. “Showing him the true way and the true God,” Father Andrews said.

That broke the spell.

“So all our ways are wrong? All our gods are false?” the first man screamed.

“I did not say-”

He fended off the first blow because he saw it coming. Also the second. But then there were too many, too fast. They rained from all sides-a whirr of heavy, thudding lathi blows-so quick that before the pain of one registered, another took its place. He tried to remain on his feet, thinking he would have a better chance of survival. But they wielded their lathis with skill, hitting him on the back of his knees until his legs crumpled up under him.

On his back, he could only ward off blows to his head, but realised they were not attacking his head. This gave him hope, as did their masked faces. They didn’t intend killing him. He could almost laugh with relief. But they kept hitting his legs and arms. Something crunched. A bolt of pain that surpassed every blow he had taken so far shot through his whole body and then it was gone. He saw the lathis rise and land on him in a blur, but it didn’t seem to be his body anymore.

He tried to say, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do.” He felt ashamed that he could not say it from his heart. He glimpsed the poor man standing behind looking at him sadly. Father Andrews felt he had failed him.

Perhaps his assailants understood that he was beyond pain now. The blows stopped. They turned to the poor man.

“Why did you go to him? He will insult and spit on our gods and you will listen to him. He will tell us that what our ancestors have been doing for centuries is wrong. If you go to him again… you saw what we did to him. Will you go to him now?”

The man shook his head.

“We have saved you from him. But he has polluted you. You have to be purified to become one of us again. Come with us. We will purify you.”

Shivering in the breeze that had sprung up across the river, the loincloth clad man hesitated. “Will I get a bag of rice?”

“Father, forgive us all,” Father Andrews whispered to the heavens.