6:30 am, Ommallur, 25th November

Trees sway and dance to the first ray of sun soaking the dirt of the night in hope this sleepy town immersed in the hallelujah chorus for various gods stands on its feet, birds chirp joyous songs and float in the thin air, untouched and immaculate. Mother's prayers reach the skies and hit my ears, it's been an alarm clock since I was ten. My mind wanders to the time when we woke to the sounds of the radio, when the weight of the school bag bent our shoulders. With the arrival of youth, the burden of that memory sometimes puts a smile on my face when we wanted to grow up we should have known school bags and skirts were life's precious gifts that could never be as good as a pricey designer handbag.

Hope

This year might remain

a thorn in our flesh

in our memories a nightmare

that shook us up

in the middle of the night.

A circled year on the calendar

that put plans on hold

weddings, holidays, dates

every crumb of life that 

kept our plates full

we'll  treat with contempt

this year like a rodent that we are trying to

remove from our homes

a comma we are trying to erase

from the sentence of our lives  

that has split the meaning.

Yet in the midst of a lost poem

called life, I try to wake up to the angry alarm clock, eat the breakfast

without making complaints, 

as I struggle to find the lost rhythms  

hope is the name I think of

that inspires me to sing along

with a choir that is keeping

the music alive in a mass

that can only be seen, not tasted.  

Silence

This pandemic tells us a story
of how we may need to wait
before we join the dots
of our life. The image is blurred.

Sleep is a ritual just like
the Sunday mass. I love to do it
but why I want to. I can't say.
Nothing can make it happen.
Not even the perishing blue light
of the television shutting itself down.
I think I'm evading fear by staying awake.

Thanking for the food is gratitude best done when hunger games are being played
destruction looms large so does uncertainty
learning to live in a room blinking with lights and smelling of disinfectants is a lesson
live the day until the mind can close its door.

Nights aren't tired they draw pictures on a blank slate, shapes that define existence
as I search for the brightest star in the sky, I smile at the thought of the person who taught me to memorise my name
I call him faith. He calls me silence.

March 31st 2020

Anxiety is a painful rot
in the hollow of my skull
looking for signs for a pandemic
that's spreading smoothly
as butter on bread.
Fear is a smokescreen
dulled by the brightness of TV
that fill the gaps in the room.
He should have been here
did he forget to call?

In a pilgrimage that travelled
faster than light, losses are counted
Faith was the biggest price
followed by sleep that is a violent moon chase, almost every night.
In a room reeking of disinfectants
protection is an assurance, of not having caught by the fever.
Circled dates are a holy ritual
prayer a promise
one day battles would be won
when future would be a tomorrow
feeding on the seeds of resurrection
that will wake up the dead bones
a leap of faith won't cost
many lives. It'll find it's way.
Through the lying, cheating flock
of bastardised men. 

Original Sin

The wind sweeps past me
as I sit inside the tinted windows
of a neat and swanky car.
Sundays are an affair to remember
especially the bland Sunday breakfast
in the terrace dining coloured by
the yellow sun
and these cab drives with people who speak strange languages.
Stuck in a city that I wanted to
build my home in, I want to now
Hail Mary my out of it. Our Father, deliver us from the evil one.

This day gave me a moment of realisation
when truth woke me up in the
morning, and whispered "love is a lie"
I let it sink in, and wash it away
with the bubbling  toothpaste foam. I bit hard to
chew and digest this truth with every morsel of food. It sank down my throat.

Cab drives to the church are a joyride for my song play list.  As the next song plays out  lust is the word that sings,
sweetly like the choir singer at the church.
It's defined the cycle of procreation. In clear concise words.
They named it love. And fooled us with it.
We chose to believe in it.
So that our body won't hurt
when it would camouflage itself
and feast on our flesh.
It is the truth. That the church forgot to teach us. Every Sunday we gulp it down with the host. And smile ear to ear.
Bearing the weight of the original sin.

30th December 2019

The aroma of freshly roasted peanuts,brightly lit malls, happy people seeking solace in year end festivities, the cackling sounds of overjoyed children, coloured billboard shining in the dark like a polestar.
The sounds of a language that talks to you, names of streets that you recognise like a math formula, the nip in the air that cuts through your tired bones.
A winter movie that will keep playing
in my mind as I go back to a city
that doesn't know my name.
Delhi is home. The final destination.
Every other place is a milestone that I can count on, before I reach home.
To usher in another new year. 

Status of women in the Syrian Christian society

Introduction

This article aims at showing the practices and procedures existing in the events of birth, marriage and death amidst the Syrian Christians of the state of Kerala in India. And the rituals and customs aimed at creating a mental and social divide in a patriarchal society with the place of women in the father's household and in her conjugal household after marriage. So also it will explore the elements of Syrian Christian wedding and the Indian practices customized exclusively for the women, and not the men to bear as symbols of devotion in a matrimonial relationship. 

The subject of analysis are the Syrian Christians of the state of Kerala in India, who believe that they were converted by St. Thomas, the apostle of Christ according to myths that date back to AD 52, but since 17th century have been divided into several different church denominations and traditions. The Orthodox and Jacobite syrian Christians are two of the segments of one denomination which split in 1912, with one paying allegiance to the patriarch of Antioch and the other to the Malankara metropolitan, the Catholicos.¹

Kerala society in the earliest centuries was traditionally plural. It allowed for the portrayal and interaction of the Hindu, Christian, and Syrian codes which led to a later society inspired by all these schools of thought. There was an effective internal impetus towards reciprocal relativity among the various spheres of social life, and less of dominance or submission of any one in relation to the others. There had been the areas bound by a pluralistic system of values in which the other spheres of activity are accorded their due and place. It does not mean at all that the Syrian Christians did not have their private world. They did have their own private world. It related to their rituals and ecclesiastical life, “with the norms of endogamy determining the level of contact and intimacy between the individuals”. The Christian community, as the traditions of the Syrian Christians show, lived and developed and the Christian life grew on the pattern of temple-life of the Hindus.² The community must have lived together as a caste, in villages or in towns, as is the ancient custom of India, and the church probably stood in a central place. Apart from the convenience for church-worship, the Christians considered it spiritually elevating to live near the churches, and this preference for living near the churches has continued in Kerala down to this day. They used to bring the sick to the church. The churches and the surrounding places were used as inns or Dharmashalas by the pilgrims.

¹ A. R Sreedharan Menon, Cultural heritage of Kerala, An Introduction, p 57

² A. M. Mundadan, History of Christianity in India, Vol. I, Bangalore, TPI, 1984, Pp. 1-21