Issues

I attended a mission. Two days of it, rather. Cynical ol' me couldn't last the whole week. My parents couldn't figure out why I went. Unlike the many retreats organised in school, I was under no compulsion to attend, and they couldn't help but contrast my voluntary disappearance for two hours every evening with the pleading and begging before every retreat for a letter that confirmed my status as a non-practising Catholic. (nope, never did get one)

I didn't even try and explain it to them. Did try and explain it to Rice, but she didn't get it. The one person who did, not surprisingly, was my cousin Z who spent the last five years studying law in little hamlet in Andhra Pradesh. Much like Trichy, I imagine. I told her I thought I needed an infusion from the church. To make me feel good about being Christian. She nodded and said, yeah I know what you mean. When I told Rice the same thing I got a startled, my god, what did they do to you in Trichy?

Both of us studied in the same convent run schools right up to Grade XII. And I guess that's why, though the non-Catholics out-numbered us, my faith was never an issue. I sometimes wondered if they minded reciting the Our Father occasionally at assembly, but beyond grudging them the free periods they got when we were at Mass, I didn't really think about it. Then Rice went to a convent run college and I went to NITT.

I suppose it shouldn't have affected me. Being the single Catholic among the zillion Tam Brahms. But it did. It wasn't the absence of carols around Christmas time or the fact that no one else had a smear of ash on their forhead at the beginning of Lent. It was the subtle insinuation (unconscious perhaps) that I, as a Christian was somehow inferior to them. You might say I was imagining it, but for the fact Z went through the same thing.

And so I went for the mission. Not that it helped much.

I guess you pay for a good education in many diferent ways.