Gospel according to Father Veranani

Reverend Father Cherian Veranani died.  When the information was conveyed to me by my father many years ago, it did not evoke any feelings in me. 

Father Veranani was the headmaster of St Sebastian’s School, Vazhithala, where I studied from class 6 to class 10 in the first half of 1970s.  There was no higher secondary school (classes 11 & 12) in those days. Now St Sebastian’s is a higher secondary school, but Father Veranani is not there to head it.

Whenever I remember Father Veranani what comes to my mind is a slender, flexible cane which he used to carry all the time with him.  His silver hair dashes into my mind almost simultaneously reminding of the picture of the god I had seen in some catechism books. 

Vazhithala was a nondescript village four-and-a-half kilometres from my home and it is yet to make any mark in the history of Kerala though many new institutions have dotted its landscape now and a few more buses have started plying the only one main road passing through it.  But St Sebastian’s Vazhithala was a popular school in the vicinity of our village in those days.  There were other high schools at more or less equal distance from my home and they too were government-aided ones run by the Catholic Church. 

Father Veranani’s popularity in our village was such that my father would put me only in St Sebastian’s Vazhithala as he had done with my elder brother and sister and as also he had not done with my younger siblings.

Looking back now I know why my father fell in love with St Sebastian’s.  It was because of Father Veranani.  It was because of Father Veranani’s slender, flexible cane.  It was because of the Catholic Church.

By the time my younger brother had to join class 6 (our local primary school was only up to class 5) my father became a little more practical.  He put them in another school.  That school was also four kilometres away from home but there were buses running in that direction.  Like my elder siblings, I had to walk 9 km every day.  It contributed much to my robust health, I think.

My father was very fond of punishing his children.  I cannot recall many instances of my father pouring affection on his children.  But I can recall innumerable instances of his wielding the stick (broken from the nearest tree) on his boys’ thighs.  The girls were mercifully spared such ordeals.  We were four boys and six girls.  I used to joke in my youth that our women were as fertile as our land. 

The Catholic Church was absolutely opposed to birth control methods.  Father Veranani with his swishing cane was a commanding symbol of the Catholic Church.  Today the cane has disappeared from the schools and the faithful are no more loyal to the Church’s policy regarding birth control.

I can recall only two instances of Father Veranani’s cane burning through my bones. 

The school had a fairly good PA system.  Father Veranani’s voice would occasionally be amplified through the loud speakers fixed outside every wing of the school. If there was no teacher in the classroom the announcement would be drowned in the usual noises made by the students.  The teachers being no less dreadful than Father Veranani commanded a lot of silence from their students.

On that fateful day, when I was in class 7, there was no teacher in our classroom when the loudspeaker blared Father Veranani’s announcement.  It was just before the last period ended.  The Catholic students had catechism classes and the non-Catholics had moral science classes after the last period for half an hour.  Since Father Veranani’s announcement was drowned in the noises of the class, I asked a companion what it was.  He was mischievous enough to mislead me. 

I was naive enough to be misled by people almost all through my life. 

My companion told me the announcement was that there was no catechism class that day.  I didn’t wait a second longer to verify it.  Pulling up my bundle of books, I homeward plodded my weary way.  There were many other students too plodding their own ways, weary or not.  Nothing looked amiss to me as I pulled out the book I had pilfered from my father’s library and started my usual reading as I walked along the four-and-a-half kilometre stretch.

But there was something amiss.  The next morning Father Veranani came to my classroom, the cane dangling ominously in his hand, and pulling me up asked me to stretch out my arm.   I had bunked off from the catechism class on the previous day. He did not accept my explanation about the announcement.  The cane landed three times on my palm and etched a scar in my soul.  I was, however, grateful to Father Veranani for not reporting the matter to my father. 

The school organised a retreat for the Catholic students when I was in class 8.  A ‘retreat’ is a series of tedious religious sermons preached by an untiring priest from morning till evening with brief intervals in between.  During the morning interval the students, as usual, had retreated to their classrooms.  I was talking with some of my friends in my classroom when Father Veranani called all of us out to the veranda so that the punishment would serve as an example to other students too who would see it from their classrooms or outside.  Our crime?  We had broken the rule of silence.  All through the retreat we were supposed to maintain absolute silence. 

The furious swish of Father Veranani’s cane on the palm of my companions rattled my bones though my own palm had tasted it less than a year ago.  When my turn came I involuntarily pulled my palm back a little and the cane swished through the air to hit Father Veranani’s cassock with a loud noise.  He caught me by the edge of my khaki half pants (the uniform) and fired half a dozen salvoes on my slender thigh. 

Later on when Father Veranani was staying somewhere near my hometown as a retired priest, my father asked me many times to visit him.  Father Veranani was supposed to have built my character along with many other priests and nuns at different times.  I always found an excuse to postpone the visit.

When I was told by my father that Father Veranani was dead I did not feel any emotion.  There was neither love nor hate.  There was neither joy nor sadness.  It was as if some stranger had died.

What was Father Veranani’s contribution to my life?  He was a good English teacher.  He taught me only in class 10 and I loved his classes.  He laid the foundation of my English knowledge.  I can still recall (35 years later) some of his English classes.  I am indeed grateful to him for that.  But that gratitude is not touched with any emotion.  It is just a memory carried by the neurons in my brain.

Punishments don’t achieve any purpose, I think.  At least not the kind wielded by my father and his generation.  Yet I am not opposed to punishments altogether.  Physical punishments are often meaningless.  They seem to carry only the anger of the person who uses them.  Punishments given out of anger serve no purpose whatever except the gratification of the anger of the one who punishes.  Punishments should be given only to make the student understand his fault and help him to correct it.  It should never be given out of anger or even annoyance. 

Father Veranani belonged to a generation that believed in the maxim: Spare the rod and spoil the child.  The rod was his gospel. So he did not spare the rod at all.  How many children were spoilt or made by that rod, I don’t know. 

He did not punish in anger, however.  He looked indifferent as the cane rose and fell in his hands.  He looked liked a serene crusader for discipline.  If I can blame him anyway, it would be about the self-righteousness that his cane symbolised.  But the Church is the most self-righteous institution I have ever come across so far and Father Veranani was a man of the Church.

Murder in the Convent

 

Three centuries ago Jonathan Swift remarked that the law is like a spider web.  The small flies will get caught, while the bigger ones will rip it apart and fly away. 

The murder case of Sister Abhaya vindicates Swift.

Sister Abhaya was murdered in the Pius X Convent, Kottayam, Kerala on 27 March 1992.  In spite of the frantic efforts of the nun’s family members and many social organisations to obtain justice, the murderers remained at large during the last 17 years.  The reason: the murderers were big flies that could rip apart the web of justice.

Now, 17 years after the murder took place, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has filed a charge sheet against the three murderers.  All three of them are religious by profession: Father Jose, Father Thomas and Sister Sephy.  Sister Abhaya was murdered with a hatchet.  The charge sheet says that Sister Abhaya who came into the kitchen early in the morning to take drinking water found the two priests and the nun in a compromising position and hence she was knocked down with a hatchet and later her unconscious body thrown into the well of the convent. The young nun died in the well.  The Catholic Church in Kerala used all its power and glory to get this case written off as a suicide.  The victim’s father, however, continued his struggle for justice.  He seems to be successful after 17 years of struggle against a powerful nexus of religion and politics. 

Those who followed the television reports about this case in the last few months must have been struck by the serene demeanour of the three accused as they walked along with the police personnel holding a rosary in their hand with its crucifix held aloft as if it were an Olympic torch.  One police officer who manipulated the enquiries in favour of the accused committed suicide a few months back when he could not bear his guilt any more.  There are also rumours that the Church might have had a hand in this officer’s death too.  It is more likely that he committed suicide unable to carry the burden of his guilt.  An ordinary layman – in terms of the Church’s hierarchy – couldn’t bear his guilt of manipulating the truth.  But the priests and the nun who committed the heinous crime looked as serene as angels all through!

I have seen hundreds of Catholic priests in my life.  I have never seen a priest carrying a rosary openly in the hand.  The picture of Father Jose and Father Thomas as well as Sister Sephy carrying their rosaries refuses to fade from my mind.  Having committed a vicious crime and evaded the law for two decades, now they have the temerity to hoodwink the public by playing on their religious sentiments with the exhibition of a crucifix!  The charge sheet also says that the two villainous priests were notorious for their relationships with women. 

The serenity displayed by the three criminals makes us wonder how hard their hearts must be. The face is said to be the mirror of the heart.  Those who can conceal their heart so effectively as these three must be hardcore criminals.  But they were exhorting thousands of people from their pulpits during their last two guilt-ridden decades to be good Christians, I guess.

Let me paraphrase Swift: Religion is like a spider web.  The small flies get caught in it while the big ones sit in the centre ready to pounce upon the trapped ones.

The Farce that’s History

History is written by the winners.  And the winners may be the Catholic Church as it was in the case of the innumerable innocent women burnt as witches in the medieval period, or the slightly less innumerable men burnt as heretics, or (to cite a contemporary example) the innumerable number of young boys exploited sexually by the Christian Brothers in Ireland.

 

I’m going to narrate a very ‘interesting’ (funny but sad) episode from the history of Kerala to illustrate the farcical nature of history.  [For those who don’t know where Kerala is, it is a small state in the southernmost tip of India.]

 

On the 13th of this month [June] some Keralites will “celebrate” the golden jubilee of what is known as the Angamali Liberation Struggle.

 

A Liberation Struggle that started with the effort to save a man who fought against alcohol but ended up as a labourer in an alcohol shop!  A Liberation Struggle that was directed against the first Marxist government elected democratically in the world but the hero of which ended up as a CITU [Centre of Indian Trade Unions – a Marxist organisation] member!

 

13 June 1959, Angamali, Kerala:  The monsoon is tumbling down all over Kerala very generously (unlike in the present days!).  Kunjappan goes to picket a toddy shop. [Toddy is a local variety of alcohol.]  The police of the ruling Marxist government arrest Kunjappan.  The church of Angamali bursts out into unusual tolls.  A huge crowd of believers gathers in front of the church.  They are told that a man who fought against the vicious poison of alcohol in the village has been tortured and killed by the police.  The people, ever so eager to lap up whatever is told by the church, take out a march to the police station.  The SI [Sub-Inspector of Police] is terrified to see a crowd of over 2000 people.  He orders: “Fire into the palla!”  The constables obey the order religiously.  Seven people fall dead on the spot.  The rest escape by fleeing.  [Not too many people are foolish enough to die for their religion.]

 

The death of seven persons in police firing is a big event in the India of 1959.  It leads to a social upheaval in Kerala.  It leads to what came to be known as a Liberation Struggle in the history of Kerala.  Liberation from the brutal Marxist government. 

 

The whole farce of the incident lies partly in a linguistic twist.  The word ‘palla’ used by the SI meant ‘bush’ in his colloquial language.  He was asking his constables to fire into the bush!  [Why he didn’t ask them to fire into the innocuous air as the police usually do is a mystery.] But the constables didn’t understand their SI’s colloquial parlance.  For them ‘palla’ meant ‘belly’ – the local meaning of the term.  One word, seven deaths, a liberation struggle – a farce in history!

 

Yes, it was a farce in history.  On July 31 the government of Kerala was disbanded by the union government of India.

 

The real farce: Kunjappan who picketed the toddy shop, who fought heroically against alcohol, became a labourer in a toddy shop later.  Moreover, he became a member of CITU!

 

7 June 2009.  A pastoral letter written by a bishop is read out in the churches of Kerala.  It calls for another Liberation Struggle against the present Marxist government in the state.  The real reason (which the pastoral will not mention, of course): the church is not able to make as much profit from its educational institutions as it would like to.

 

Another Liberation Struggle may set off in Kerala.  If the people haven’t learnt better lessons than in 1959.  No, they haven’t.  People cannot afford to learn such lessons.  Survival is a matter of staying with those who will write the history!

 

Want more farce?  A man called Chaku died of drinking after the 1959 Liberation Struggle.  The reason: he was the one who shouted to the 2000-strong crowd that had gathered in front of the Angamali church: “Chalo Police Station”.  His guilt feeling wouldn’t let him live in peace after the death of the seven persons because of his sloganeering.  Slogans and guilt – two of the many gifts of the church to mankind!