Part II of yesterday’s Post, nudged by our family friend the talented Chef Shaz Sol, U.K. “..waiting to hear the unfinished smoke you just started, ….to be cont’d….?”
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Nj, Vi and I are out at Alaia -Alli Shoppe for a jacket. Its a family wedding soon; we stop for coffee. November is cool sunlight, and no trace of cyclone Mantha. They’re selling plastic pumpkin lanterns with black grinny teeth, & skull rings;
we get talking about Ramirez, an ex- satanist on Halloween, & Rebecca Brown’s Best Seller, “He came to set the captives free.” Sitting here facing a new month, one small shiver goes down vertebrae and into the floor of a loneliness like never before.
The absolute thrill for old Lucifie, must be this: people stopping after Bible Study, to buy a Grim Reaper shovel for their kid, for his fun night out at neighbourhood doors decked with skeletons in black light…
Vihan Damaris.
I was 14, east of India: some lanes had chicken heads heaped on either side of road, even tiger dancers in yellow black stripes. Blood drinkers of fowl. You didn’t need Halloween; darkness lit itself down for anyone, It offered free visas to an under world, waiiiiiiting.
You get de- sensitized.
When someone gifted me a set of plastic Dracula jaws, I went and scared Nurse Kajul next door, and then the timid Saha family. Courage and some amount of deadly admiration grew webs in my feet, down the stairs to four more front doors. My ‘nice’ face smiling my Dracula, at horrified neighbours. They made me repeat the act, on an otherwise boring day for some, maybe.
If you knew anything about our rows of hymnals at home, (growing up), you also know we listened to Radio Ceylon’s, Back to the Bible half hour broadcast 7 am, or later the occasional Black magic woman,🎶(Santana), uffff, the beat! Soon, the lines blur.
Just out of school I helped a dance to Osibisa’s,
“..we are goingb’, he’a’bem knows where we are goingb”…”
The kids were in costume and make-believe voodoo beat, by a Dance teacher who was the most fun person the school ever had, no?! It felt innocent. I shudder to think what doorways opened there; at the impact of any route, however well meant, that hurt someone’s safety.
Born Christian yes, but I found Yeshua on my own terms; in the year just out of higher secondary, He touches me, top of my head to tremble toe, in a CSI cathedral in Chennai. Don’t go looking down any nose at Old School Padres. He used that Cathedral to shock me into staring at that Light touching my soul. Me, born in a Bible touting home, renting Jesus in my heart since toddlerhood, yet oblivious to these secret little innocent looking doorways.
Age 27, He touches my spine. Who knew I was born with a spinal defect that could’ve progressed into a wheelchair. I was on cortisol spinal injections, for life, but now –
I found the One Who traded His only Son Jesus for me, on a skull shaped rock.
Years later, our third child, (Yona, blind from birth), crawling in the floor of our Mumbai apartment; Santana had just released an instrumental remix. NJ worked in a place that mastered local Bollywood and other hits, in a few months he’d resign, but that noon stands out. Our baby son with no clue of this and that, yells, cries, crawls back fast as he could.
We tried out other tapes on him, even the TV: there was a firm red line between what his sensories could handle and what he could not. D’you need details; I mean this was scary. Here we were parents of a challenged Lil one. It was he who’d run, if there was the slightest kind of disturbance, or arguement. Ay, babies, plants, even animals respond to what we grown ups become de- sensitized to.
Halloween, the Celtic festival of Samhain, marks summer harvest’s end to beginning of winter, and belief that the boundary between the living and the dead blurred on this night. Trick or Treating evolved from “Souling ” where the poor would beg for Soul Cakes, in exchange for prayers for the dead. 🤔
Over time, Roman festivals honoring the dead merged with Samhain. Catholic All Souls’ Day in November, with the night before, “All Hallows’ Eve,” became Halloween. The details sink in. What can I say.
On the steps outside “Soul of Coffee”, a group of three eat sandwiches, their coarse silk saree, arms full bangles and charms. They’re smoking on tiny bidis. Someone in a tee shirt passes by, the Tee has a death wish and swear word on his self. The eyes are cold, I can’t say one thing to him, we’re too cultured to interfere. Everyone must do their thing, ya.
The young man looks away. Why is it easier to spread bad news than good; why’s it considered so evil to talk about Light, love, Joy, Peace, a Friend that’d die for you…
back home, I’m a quiet specimen of human. The loudest thing I’ve done recently is a bohemian looking chain NJ got me, he- so full of zest for living, assuring me it looks great! And burgundy wash that got my white locks so red, its embarassing. I’m getting some black tones in. Growing older is not easy. We’re growing in all kinds of ways, in an earth calendar we cannot stop.
“There are two important dates: the day you were born and the day you know why.” Mark Twain. From a movie last night: true life story of Olympic high jump champ, Raising the Bar.
“I have a feeling you were made for higher influence,” a stranger tells Alma Richards, one stormy night, in a run down inn. The words began to change him from Ranch- hand to Gold Medalist.He had “more than Oomph. He had God.” Alma wasn’t ashamed to kneel, asking for Sacred Help. It was the Olympics, Pre WWI.
I’m in a season called the Vineyard of Prayer. These Yards share space with any who’d enter, here you’re more than Human. Here am Grape crush/ seasoned by a Harvest inspite of earth winter. Here, one can be made new, an Eden made over. The Surgeon’s knife cuts soul to the Cross wounds of Yeshua. Gory, yes, the healing kind.
Our girl Vihan is right: its sad how we’re scared of God, of His kind of Love that’s this invested in our Soul.
The kind of Love you’d recognize as Real. Eternal.
P.S.
FMF recognize Writing Prompt. Long Post🍃
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