Resurrection Of Ananyobroto Don Cupitt

My wife has attacked me with a list of movies that she intends to watch. My presence is merely consequential to the extent of driving her to the movies only because the chauffeur is unavailable for late-night shows. The list includes:

• Krrish (3rd time)
• Superman Returns
• Corporate (1 1/2th time. She wants to watch it again because we missed the titles and director's disclaimer)
• Golmal
• Strings
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (to be released)

Recently at a gathering, the conversation gamboled from one subject to another until it landed at movies. Everyone was giving his or her view on the best movies of all time, dissecting, discussing and arguing about them until it was my BIL's turn to pick his choice. For everyone uninformed at the gathering, (and some of you) my BIL's working knowledge about movies is nearly nonexistent. Without much thought, he said, Superman and followed it up with, I have watched Superman I, II, III & IV 37 times in total. Nobody understood why, until he said, Ban****, I have been watching Superman for the last 30 years with the hope that atleast in subsequent versions of the movie; the director will fix the Kacha. He was obviously drunk.

When I was growing up, I had a father with liberal views on religion. He used to say, paraphrasing Henry Ford; You can have friends of any color or religion - so long as they are Hindus. This latitudinarian view has weakened over the years but his recurring chimera continues to torment him.

Some of my closest friends then and now consist of Muslims, Christians, Jews and Women. I think, if my memory serves me right, during high school*, I was bum chums with two Christians. For the purpose of our discussion, I will refer to them with their initials, A** & D**. AD were good friends much before I went to school with them. They used to meet at balls on Sundays and jive to Engelbert Humperdinck or Barry Manilow with the catholic chicks and sip fruit punches till their mammas & pappas would come looking for them.

For some strange reason, I was friendlier with D than I was with A and this didn't fit well with A. It didn't take a lot of doing to be my friend back then. Buy me a Goldspot or Campa Cola and voila I was your friend. A made repeated attempts to get close to me and when all else failed, he turned to religion. He wouldn't watch porn with us, wouldn't listen to The Beatles since he believed that their music was The Hand Of Satan, wouldn't share a cola or a burger, nosirebob, nothing. He turned absolutely weird on us until one day, he convinced both of us to go to a certain Christian Congregation in some dilapidated convent school named Brothers Of St.Peter's or Fathers Of St.Mark's. He told us how Christianity as a religion was dying and a bunch of parishioners and brethren were working very hard to instill the faith of Jesus in everybody around them.

Though I am not a believer in God or one single religion like all urban educated folk, I follow Kabbalah. I am just kidding. I didn't have a problem going to this congregation but my father surely did. After much convincing by my mum, he agreed to let me go for this meeting.

• We reached the location, a prime spot for day light rapes. It was a half-finished/unfinished whitewashed building with un-plastered stairs and walls. There were puddles of water everywhere with more water dripping through the roof.
• Present at the gathering already were exceptionally empty Polypropylene chairs in a huge hall with no windows and artificial lighting. At the rostrum, stood a tall, dark, lanky chap in a habit with The Holy Bible (I guess) in one hand and a wooden Cross in the other. I swear, I am not kidding but he looked like Bela Lugosi. Also, by his side stood a bunch of people who were making sure that sound system was in order.
• Bela was glad to see A and with a knowing smile, he greeted us. I have always been a back-bencher (not just academically) at school. Even before I could head back to the last row in the hall, Bela asked us to take the first three seats in the front row.
• People started trickling in one after the other, greeting Bela and finding a suitable place to sit. I swear, I saw some pretty girls too. By the time the Prayer began, atleast 75 people had assembled in the hall.
• Bela started telling us about the birth of Jesus, the second coming, etc. by which time, my cup had runneth over big time. I was terribly bored and being a first-bencher didn't help my cause. Somewhere during the discourse, vernacular Bela2 joined Bela and started literally translating the English verses into the local language. This brought about instant mirth in me.
• Everything was going on smoothly till this happened. This is an absolute true occurrence. Everybody in the room kicked off their shoes, got off their chairs, got down on their knees and held their neighbor's hand. No such luck for me, I was sandwiched between A & D.
• At this moment Bela asked everyone to close their eyes and let the Lord transcend into them, giving them the strength, courage and power to be honest to themselves, their neighbors and loved ones. He asked the people to believe in the Lord and speak the truth. He wanted us to confess*** our sins or wrong doings to the strangers in the night.
• The indistinct murmur and undertones, at this point, suddenly broke into obstreperous and uproarious bawling and the entire room began to sway (not the room, the people) uncontrollably. Except me, everyone in the room including A & D were swaying incredibly. Even Bela was swaying with the microphone in his hand like a rock*.
• A suddenly tightened his grip around my palm and begged me to cry. Not only did this break my silence into a giggling fit but also induced me into bopping A on the head. This seemed to have caused some imbalance in A. This is true; he lost his balance and tripped onto his neighbor thereby causing a chain reaction. Everyone in our row except D and me were on the ground.
• After excessively crying for ten-fifteen minutes, A turned to me for forgiveness. He told me about how he hid my Chemistry Practical Recordbook, how he emptied my bike's petrol tank, how he finished my lunchbox without telling me, how he told my girlfriend that I was characterless (partially true) and finally how he wanted to be my best friend and did everything to rupture my relationship with D. Not knowing what to do, I gave him a big warm hug and never spoke to him ever since.

After the Prayer everyone went home and watched How Stella Got Her Groove Back, a soul-stirring movie about how Stella goes back to loving children half her age. They all thanked Bela for his discourse. The Prayer had dangerously exceeded my time and when I got home, I was greeted by a grim sister and a grimmer dad waiting for me at the dining table. On spotting me, he said, Hello there, Mr. John Mathiah and continued his niceties with a food prayer, Rub-a-dub-dub, Thanks for the grub. Amen.

Yours holyspirits.

Disclaimer: The practices, principles and beliefs, depicted in this post represent absolutely nothing. The information found on this blog does not apply to any other blog but this blog or with any other blog but that of Qwerty's. I do not claim to be a historical expert on the anything, I am not an expert in the language and may have committed many grammatical errors. I have derived my beliefs from oral traditions. And no, you cannot contact me for the reason you are asking. I don't wish to be harassed. Only one bugeye bumble bee was hurt. It is absolutely kosher.

* Even though it has been a couple of decades since I quit school, the memory of this incident still remains. It is a chick magnet story and I use it generously.

** D continues to be a distant friend. We speak once in a couple years. I am not sure what happened to A. I met him once at a Chinese restaurant with a girl and his mother. He had apparently finished Engineering from some fly-by-night operator school and was hoping to start working as a Medical Compounder at his dad's clinic.

*** The confession I never made to A. For a very brief period, between his breakup and reconciliation with his then girlfriend (no shame, she was Mighty Aphrodite), I extended a helping hand and a compassionate shoulder for her to lean on. I promise, I did all in the name of Thy Lord.