Sluggish Slave

I heard a sad story about one of our domestic staff, who has been temporarily entrusted with the job of a receptionist and phone attendant. Looking at him, any one would think that he should be either an alcoholic or a drug addict. Such is the look, and yet one would notice him attending the Holy Mass at six o’clock in the morning. Is he excessively pious, just to impress the Fathers and Brothers? I would not think so, because for a man in his forties, such a thing might not occur in the mind. But what I heard from the Brother in charge of him made me think about what this man could be heading towards. To begin with, he is living alone presently, and was married some years ago, and his wife deserted him unable to cope with his temperaments and behavioral pattern, and now he is earning a living here in our house and is managing life by himself. But what could be wrong with him?

One of the reasons for the breakdown of his marriage is probably because he is an alcoholic, who would spend most of his earnings in alcohol, and now that there is no one who would control him, and say not to his drinking habits, he is quite happy. When the Brother in charge refused to give him all the money from his wages, and withheld five hundred rupees for saving, he was not much enthused. He had spent all the money he received at the beginning of the month, and in two weeks be approached the Brother asking for an advance from his wages. It is impossible for drunkards to organize their lives, and think of saving something for future. He lives every day and does not care to think about tomorrow, and if some emergency were to take place, he might be driven to the streets, and there is no doubt about it. Anyone who tries to help him put an order in his life is looked upon as an unwanted intrusion, and in such a situation, his future is bleak.

The gentleman should be happy to get a job, where at least he is sure to get his three meals assured, and if he would behave well, he might get employed on a more serious basis, and may even be taken as a contract employee and therefore might get additional benefits. But who would make him understand that he is only lucky to come to our house and work under the watchful but helpful care of Brother. If there was someone else, he would have been only too happy about the job, however mean and insignificant that is. One of his tendencies which annoy the people, who are responsible for him, is his constant attempt to threaten them that he would not continue in the job too long; poor man, he does not realize that there are other people who are ready to take his job, even if it is only for a few days. Ultimately he would be the one who would suffer due to his stupidity.

Opportunities knock at our doors but only once; now that this gentleman had been threatening us of stopping coming for work, from tomorrow someone else has been arranged, and the Brother in charge is going to tell him not to come for work for the next 10 days, which means there is no guarantee that he would get a job somewhere else where he could earn enough money to have his three meals a day. But that is what is so very typical of drunkards, who only look at the immediate future and fail to see what is ahead of them. If only he was level-headed he would make compromises with the Brother in charge to retain the job, and once he is comfortable with it, he could have pleaded with them to provide him with additional facilities. No one can predict what the slaves of alcoholism would do next, and that is why his life is being drifted each day, and for how long it would continue, no one can say.

He is one who refuses to learn from life; the very fact that his wife could not live with him is ample proof that he needed to do something to keep his marriage intact; instead he is blissfully happy with his life alone, and does not even bother to get her back. Perhaps if his wife had been with him, there are chances that she might be able to turn his mind to something else, and slowly bring him back to his consciousness. The love and affection of women has immense potentiality to change even the hardest of nuts among men; however it would be impossible for women to take risk on their lives and come forward to live with such men, who may not even care to feed them once a day. I feel sad for him, and for his wife (if she is still waiting for him to turn a new leaf and invite her back home), but what could I do, but only wish he stops his alcoholism and take life seriously.

Nursing Parents’ Wounds

It is quite disheartening to even imagine that parents after about twenty years of blissful marital life could think of separation; whatever be the cause of family discord, it is hard to think of a situation where the couple feel quite incompatible, even after the two girl children, both of them quite grown up. At a time when the elder daughter is old enough to become a mother herself, it is next to impossible for her to think that her parents were contemplating seriously about separation, and she herself would do anything to stop that happening, but then she feels that she is helpless, at least in this situation.

Which child would think of his or her parents being separated; the modern world has seen many such cases, where the children are asked by the court to choose with which parent he/she would like to live, but as everyone is aware it is not possible to make a decision, that a child would live with the father or the mother. A child’s heart is too tender and soft to be torn apart by two parties. Granted that the two girls are grown up, that is not the reason for the parents to think of separation, and it is doubtful if the couple had exhausted all the possibilities of keeping the light of their marital bliss alive and blazing.

Parents are expected to nurse the wounds of their growing children, to stand by their side when the storms of life shake them from the root, but here is a situation where the children are called in to nurse the wounds of the parents, and the children just beginning to see the true color of the world are forced to witness yet another harsh reality of life, and they could hardly accept which looms before them. But would the parents who had been having stormy sessions on regular intervals down the years, think of giving another chance to the spouse to amend and get the family ties going? If the personal peace and happiness is what matters most to the couple, then it would have been better if they had not married at all!

For the elder daughter, who had offered her life to the Lord, it is more than her share of suffering the Lord had given to her, and every time she remembered the situation back at home, her eyes are filled with tears, but is it possible to leave behind the family, parents and the relationships and concentrate on her own personal call! As an individual who had grown nourishing the love and care of the parents, she feels she cannot afford to let this thing happen to her parents, but she is also aware of the crude reality, which reminds her, what if they do not care to listen to her plea! She would not have any one to appeal to!

It is not that my parents have peaceful life after about 45 years of their marriage; they have their own share of misunderstanding, quarrels, but I know one thing for sure, they could never think of separation, and even if they fight, we know for sure they would be back to talking terms after a couple of days. But times are changing, and if married persons were to think only of their personal freedom, happiness and peace of mind, then the family is bound to go to pieces and it would be impossible for anyone to save the situation. It is only God who can intervene to stop the couple breaking away, because their breaking is sure to affect the lives of the children too, and that is the reason why the daughters have begun to storm the heaven with their prayers.

Openness to Life

The young couple from Orissa, who travelled with me from Chennai in the train, looked happy and cheerful; they seemed to care for each other, and listened to songs from one mobile phone. They had too much of luggage, two cardboard cartons, and three other big bags, and was wondering what they were carrying. On the top of the cartons, it read sweets, pastries, but I was not sure if there were something inside. The man should be about thirty, and the lady in her late twenties. It was quite late that I overheard the lady sharing with another senior lady about one thing which had been a matter of concern for her and her husband: two years since their marriage, they were childless.

With expert look and demeanor, the senior lady seemed to have understood the gravity of their problem, and soon jumped in to help them. As I listened to their conversation in Hindi quietly, I came to realize the pathos that was bothering the young couple. While the young man seemed quite indifferent to the topic with the senior lady, his wife was quite enthusiastic to get the help of this senior lady, who hailed from Bihar. The ladies found something common that they went on chirping for quite some time, and at the end of their conversation, the senior lady was kind enough to give the young lady her contact number, and from where they could get medicine to “purify her blood”.

It is hard to tell if the senior lady was really trying to help the young couple, or just trying to show off that she was smarter than the young lady. Something in the appearance of the senior lady looked a little suspicious to me, and I would not trust each of her words as Gospel truth. But for persons who are frantically looking for solutions to the problems which are haunting them night and day, any person who gives them hope of a remedy is a God-sent, and they would believe them blindly, and be prepared to do whatever they may ask, even spending thousands of rupees, just for nothing. The problem is more severe in the case of educated couple, who would do anything possible within their capacity to get the malady reverted.

In the recent past, I had come across another young couple, who also had the same problem, and were meeting every doctor someone said is good. They tried alopathy, ayurvedic, homeopathy, herbal medicine, and yet were not satisfied with the remedies. The problem was with the man, it was found out, low sperm count, and therefore the doctors had to give him medicine to increase the count. Luckily the lady is expecting, and the doctors had informed them that their child would be born sometime in early August. But then they are too careful not to do anything which will deprive them of the child God had given to them.

Every child is a gift of God, and a popular adage says that every time a child is born, it is a proof that God still loves the world. If there are young people who are not able to be open to receive this great gift of God, the problem is not with God, but with our times, which is making us closed to receive children in life. The kind of life style we lead in the present days, does not allow conducive atmosphere physically, mentally and psychologically to receive this gift. We should have a proper disposition to receive any gift, otherwise it would be tantamount to insulting the giver of the gifts. Unfortunately the modern generation has to learn this bitter truth through the hard way.

Why I love you…

The human beings seem to have a reason for everything they do; there is hardly anything that is done by an adult which cannot be easily explained. Most often the children, say below the age of five, do things spontaneously, and if you were to ask them they might say because his/her mother did so, or the father did so. In some other cases, s/he may just shrug, meaning there is no reason. That is the stage of spontaneity; the leaves of a tree will bend towards the direction of the wind, and that is very natural and spontaneous. But if we were to ask a tree why it is bending towards the direction of the wind, it might just shrug.

Reasoning is considered as the sixth sense, which is so very unique to the human beings; but have the animals failed to live a happy and contended life without the sense of reason? They are jolly well happy without the sense of reason, and then why should the human beings be so very obsessed with reason, and in all the fields seek satisfactory reasons for their actions and reactions? If one were to watch some of the programs telecast in the Animal Planet television channel, one would realize that the animals have a sense which is not very common with the human beings : the sense of intuition. The birds of the air know how to protect their eggs from the prying eyes of eagles; the reptiles know how to take care of their young and initiate them to adulthood.

If our lives are often crippled and out of shape, it is because we are overly obsessed with reasons. If there is anything that we do, for which we do not have adequate and satisfactory answer, then we find it hard to do it. We have some major crimes committed, for which the culprits had no reason, and they claim that they did not do the crime consciously. Crimes such as rape, murder, arson are often committed when persons are unaware of their own situation. But in that case, can we take them as criminals, though objectively speaking they had committed the act? For me, it looks there is yet another level of consciousness, where we may find an answer to these kind of questions.

Some of the most profound actions of human persons cannot be explained reasonably. Any attempt to reason them out and explain them in human language may end up in disaster. For instance, why does a mother loves her child, or why should a father give his blood in order to save his son, and in the process give up his life? What makes some people to lay down their lives at the interest of the wider society or humanity? Or why do I love a person wholeheartedly, knowing well that our love may remain to a large extent going beyond time and space? If I begin to explain why I love a person, then I should know that it is not love that I have for that person, for true love cannot be reasoned out or explained. It takes me and the person I love to an altogether different realm, where reason are absurd and obsolete!

True love goes beyond all calculations and measurements; that is why love is often considered an absurdity, and the popular notion that love is blind is a reality! When two persons are in love with each other, they go beyond all reason and season. Recently I heard about the marriage between a beautiful young girl and a polio-affected young man, who had become a cripple. The young woman was determined to marry only this young, much against the wish of her friends and relatives. Such is the absurdity of love, and we know that it is this absurdity which gives meaning and significance to the lives of millions of men and women in this world.

Unique Gift of Life

Maybe I will never be able to realize what D&R have gone through in life, and if only I know how each of their days pass by, I might be more empathetic towards them. Now what is this D&R? Dinesh and Reshma or Dravid and Rani, or David and Reena! Maybe these are some of the commonplace names, but behind these names are individuals who are "made for each other", but are left to grope in darkness with no child they can call their own. The number of childless couples is growing, and medical science is helpless to make them not only rear, but also bear a child! Pro-creation has always been one of the primary goals of Christian marriage, as we hear it from our catechism classes!

When the couple finds out that one of them is incapable of cooperating in the bearing of a child a few years after their marriage, all troubles start. The husband may blame the wife and the wife the husband; and the couple may blame the parents, and every other person they can think of! Unfortunately their problem of bearing a child does not end there. They try to undergo any kind of medical treatment, even the witches and the ojhas, with the hope that one day they would be the proud parents of a child. What happens when all of these costly attempts fail is what I dare not imagine.

I have seen so many couples who belong to this category; how nice it would be if the angel Gabriel visits all the houses of these couples and announce the birth of a child through unusual means, through divine intervention. Even angel Gabriel does not seem to like visiting our planet. But when their attempts fail, the bond of union that had kept them together all these days, begin to be brittle; men may indulge (if they are still young enough) in extra-marital affairs, alcoholism, smoking, bad company, and anything which can make them forget the harsh fact that he has no child of his own!

If men are able to give vent to their feelings and frustrations externally, women may do just the opposite. They may keep everything within their hearts, and may one day explode. Often such feelings may find expression in obesity, all sorts of diseases, gossipping, backbiting, suspicion and finding fault with the husband, jealous of their friends having cute little babes. The unhappiness of men and women often find some concrete expression, and it may be dangerous if these people are not able to find some sort of outlet for their emotions. Ideally the husband and wife should be able to find an outlet in their spouses, but when it fails, they should find adequate means.

We live in a world, where moneyed men and women are discovering newer formulae to manage life; some years ago, I have come across people who felt having a child was a nuisance, and so would love to be by themselves. The care of a third person, for whom they may have to give up all their comforts and pleasures, might appear too much for these kind of couples, and many of them decide not to have any children, even if they are physically fit to bear and rear a child. The gift of a child is a great gift; nothing on earth can equal this gift; but if someone is deliberately refusing to have this gift, then we can only assume that these persons do not know the value and worth of the gifts. Maybe they would realize what it means to have a child, when they feel old age fast catching up with them!

Re-writing Destiny

A popular Tamil proverb says that marriages are determined in heaven, and often we come across cases of marriage which are strange and even hard to believe. And such is the marriage of this young man, with two legs thin as sticks (due to polio), and this beautiful young lady. It is a marriage between weakness and strength, weakness of the young man whose movement is highly restricted due to his legs, and strength of the lady, who gave up her family and all ties in order to stand by him, after a courtship of seven long years. But at the time of marriage, there were very few to bless them, save a Jesuit priest who stood by the couple and gave them all the much needed support, and a few other close friends. But there was something unusual in the marriage.

Maybe unusual is not the right word, a better word might be extra-ordinary. What made the 'black beauty' to stick to the young man, knowing well that her life too would be in a way restricted (imagine the restrictions to her freedom of movement); often in public gatherings it might become a bit embarassing to introduce a crippled as one's husband, however well educated he might be, and however loving he could be. To go out of the social conditionings and limitations, is in a true sense a heroic value. For the young man, this is the best he could get from life, and for the lady, this is the best she could ever offer to someone in life.

We cannot avoid the scorn of the family members and the neighbors, who might smell something out of the marriage, that the girl might be evil-intentioned, or the couple had a hidden agenda in getting married, despite the opposition by both the families! But nothing could stop them from being united in marriage, and the presence of just a handful of men and women to stand by them at the moment of their self-offering to each other was enough for them to put the right foot forward, as another Tamil proverb might have it. They have no regrets, no demands from anyone on earth. They do not mind starting life anew, from the scratch. There is a special joy in exploring life as it unfolds every moment, and every day.

But what could we say about the families of the couple, who initially oppposed the marriage, but later became indifferent. The girl's family could not believe that she would do such a stupid thing to marry a physically challenged person, and they might even thought that it was a shameful thing for her to do that, and they would have thought it better to keep themselves away from what she was doing; they could not accept her determination, it came as a big blow to them. But then what about the boy's family: instead of welcoming the lady to their household, they only keep her away from them, because there was a unseen factor dividing the families : caste, the most poisonous demon causing havoc in most of the families in the South.

There is no greater assurance in such difficult moments than divine providence, and hope in life as it takes charge of the new family that is formed in marriage. Life has the potentiality to transform hearts, and melt stones. It might take sometime for life to reveal magical moments, where reality would be so very different from what people thought it to be. Where hearts reach out to the core of their inner selves, there no caste, no family feuds, economical factors, or even physical beauty can stand. Truly from this day, the young man has better sticks to lean on - his wife, and with her by his side, he can face any stromy night, scorching sun and torrential rain!