Age of Frenzy

by Mahabaleshwar Sail

  It was almost midnight and the whole area was dark and still except for the drone of insects that cut through the darkness like a saw. A flaming torch appeared in the distance. Footsteps rang out and the bullocks scrambled to their feet, lowing in alarm.

  ‘Who’s there? Who is it?’ the driver called as four men barged into the temple. ‘Stop! Stop! These are travellers from distant places,’ he protested, but they shoved him aside. Rudra, Sumitra and the boys huddled on one side, too terrified to scream. As the men picked up the box and bundles, Rudra shouted, ‘Stop! That’s all we possess, unfortunate people that we are!’ But he didn’t move from where he stood.

  When Sumitra realized that they were taking the bundle that contained her household deities, she rushed after them, crying in protest. It was then that one of the men picked her up and began to run. ‘Let me go! I’m a mother of three children. A mother! Give me my gods!’ she screamed. Who knows what passed through the man’s mind, for he suddenly flung her down in the undergrowth and ran away.

  Rudra came up to where Sumitra lay, bruised and shaken, weeping bitterly about how they’d taken away her gods, how they’d touched her and made her impure. She sat awake all night, refusing to say a word, but as dawn broke she wailed, ‘They’ve taken my gods. They set hands on me! Lord, see how we suffer even as You look on!’

  Rudra was a shattered man. ‘Who were those vandals, why did they loot us?’ he asked the driver.

  ‘Who knows who they were? So many strangers have come here since the unrest began in Goa. The Portuguese drove the Moors and other Muslims out. Some moved on, others remain scattered in these parts. They might be slaves who have run away from Goa. Or people who have fled their homes to escape conversion. They might even be locals hoping to shift the blame on the wayfarers.’

  ‘Were they Moors or Muslims?’ Sumitra asked.

  ‘Who knows?’

  ‘What was their caste? Their religion?’

  ‘No one can tell.’

  Rudra and the driver fell asleep after a while, but Sumitra sat there silently. She was a slim, fair woman but the exertions of the last twenty days seemed to have broken her completely. The blood seemed to have drained from her fair skin making her look like a doll of cotton-wool. She got up quietly and walked to the well, which was just a hollow in the ground filled with water. She sat for a while on the edge with her feet touching the water. Overcome by a deep desire for death, she slid in. There was just a plop … like a pot entering the water. No one was jolted awake.

  Samba Savke was the chief gaonkar of Talavali village and owned many orchards and fields. The next morning, the driver rushed to him with the sad news. Savke and a few villagers helped to retrieve the body and perform the last rites.

  ‘You are a Brahmin, I am a Khatri, so you will not accept my hospitality. There is a little shack in my orchard where you can stay for some time. I will send some rice, a coconut and some vegetables every day. Your elder son lit the funeral pyre. I will send the priest to the shack. Have him perform the funeral rites. Let me know if you need anything,’ he said to Rudra.

  Samba Savke had a younger brother who supervised the work in the fields and orchards. He could see with one eye and the white eyeball that seemed to bulge out of the other socket made him look very ugly. One day, he summoned Rudra and the boys and asked them to work in the fields. ‘It’s been more than a month now. How long will you sit back and enjoy the free food?’ he said.

  Rudra was feeling uncomfortable about accepting Savke’s hospitality, but the thought of working like a labourer upset him deeply. Yet he picked up the spade and built ridges around the coconut palms and shovelled the mud. His sons gathered dry palm fronds and coconuts that had fallen from the trees.

  Two months passed in this manner. One day, a servant saw Rudra’s sons eating sugarcane in the fields and complained to Savke’s brother. It was considered inauspicious to eat the cane before the harvest rituals were performed. The man lashed out at the boys, ‘We follow strict rules and rituals here, we will not tolerate thieves!’ he yelled.

  Rudra Shenai grew very agitated at this. I slog in people’s fields even though I am a Brahmin. My sons are beaten up. We cannot stay here and get insulted any longer. We left our village for the sake of our gods and our faith, but God and religion are mere concepts, they don’t help us fill our bellies. What difference does it make whether one bathes in a well or in a lake? Why did Sumitra have to die? She worshipped those idols so fervently, did they display any special powers? These gods are responsible for our state, I want no more of them!

  He got up early the next morning and went to Samba Savke. ‘I cannot repay you for all that you have done, you have saved our lives. But I must go back to my village,’ he said.

  ‘You want to return to your village? You can’t practise our faith there, I’m told.’

  ‘If we are to suffer more, we’ll suffer in our own village. God and religion are important as long as one has food in one’s belly. Accepting their religion is better than this life!’

  Samba Savke was silent for a while. ‘Go. Go back. Each man is a king only in his own village.’ He went into the house and came back with twelve xerafins which he gave Rudra Shenai.

  It was over a year since the temple had been razed, but no church had been built as yet. Small wood and bamboo shacks with thatched roofs served as churches in the neighbouring villages, but Padre Colaso wanted to build a strong edifice with stone slabs and mortar and a tiled roof. He believed that the church would not have any sanctity if it were built with the wood and stone from the heathen temple. So, he went to meet the Archbishop accompanied by the chief gaonkar, Ranu Kenkre, now Henrik Kaisuro.

  ‘The village will bear half the cost of building the church. With the income from the community fields, the free labour provided by the villagers, and help from you, it can be done,’ he told the Archbishop.

  ‘You must get permission from the King of Portugal as well as the viceroy if you want to build a permanent structure,’ the Archbishop said. ‘The new viceroy, Anton Noronha, is favourably inclined towards us. I will write to him. Take the letter and meet him, along with the chief gaonkar. Say that the villagers of Adolshi want to build a church. Request him to grant some funds.’

  They took the letter and went to meet the viceroy. All Ranu Kenkre wanted was to safeguard the interests of the village. Everything had changed so quickly and suddenly he’d become responsible for the village and its welfare.

  ‘You needn’t have destroyed the Ramnath temple,’ he said to Padre Colaso one day. ‘Nilu Nayak had taken the deity away. You could have installed a statue of Jesus and set up a cross right there.’

  ‘You won’t understand all that, Kaisuro.’

  ‘What difference would it have made, temple or church? Both are mere structures, four walls and a roof.’

  ‘You won’t understand.’

  Viceroy Constantin Braganza had returned to Portugal and Anton Noronha had taken his place in Goa. Noronha spoke to them warmly and asked them to sit down. When he heard that Kenkre was the mhal gaonkar, he patted Ranu’s shoulder and said, ‘The village administration in Goa, and those who conduct it are looked upon with respect all over the world. We have always supported this system, and we shall continue to do so.’

  Padre Colaso outlined the proposal for the church and gave him the Archbishop’s letter. ‘We cannot hope for success without your support. The villagers will do all they can, but we need funds. We request you to carry this plea to the King.’

  The viceroy smiled at them. Enthusiastically, he said, ‘By the grace of Lord Jesus, the Goan islands, Sashti and Bardez have become Christian localities. Each village needs a church, but this cannot happen so fast. It will take time. We are building large churches in Salgao, Mathgao and Raichur at the moment. Adolshi will get its own church some day. Why don’t you use the wooden beams and stone slabs from the old temple to build a temporary structure for now? Thatch the roof with palm fronds. Celebrate Mass and of
fer prayers. Spread the message of our faith, let it grow strong. Go back to your village and get to work. I’ll carry glowing reports about you to the religious assembly and to the King.’

  They returned to Adolshi and sent soldiers from door to door asking the villagers to report for work the next day. Those who didn’t come of their own accord were threatened and forced to turn up.

  Ventu Nayak picked up a stone slab and balanced it on his head. ‘If this is all you wanted to do, why did you pull the temple down? You could have placed your gods inside. Change the ornaments, remove the nath and put on a mokan, but the nose is the same! Utter madness!’ he fumed.

  The church was ready in eight days. Four walls as high as a man’s chest, and a roof of wooden beams thatched with hay and palm fronds. The floor was made of red mud beaten and smoothened. Someone suggested that it be plastered with a coat of dung, but Padre Colaso opposed the idea. ‘Those who sing praises of the cow and her urine and dung are heathens. We don’t want them here,’ he said.

  The padre went to Goapattana along with two villagers and brought a large cross and some wooden statues. One was of Jesus nailed to the cross. There was one of infant Jesus, another of Mother Mary and there were a few angels as well. They also bought a table, two bells and a staff. The money was drawn from the village funds. All the temple employees were now employed by the church. This included the musicians who played the drums and the pipes and the devleen who swept and cleaned the place. There were some artisans who made decorations and there were others who tended the oil lamps and carried the flaming torches in processions. Those who had been granted tracts of temple land in lieu of services rendered to the temple were allowed to keep those tracts. They would merely offer their services to the church.

  Padre Colaso was looking for a smart, young boy to assist him in his duties and so he thought of Venkat, the bhat’s son.

  ‘His father was the priest in the temple,’ Kusha Nayak protested, but Padre Colaso merely smiled.

  ‘Rayanna Bhat wanted to make the boy a priest and let him serve as a padre in the church. That’s why he became a Christian along with his son. Let’s give him some work in the church now.’

  Padre Colaso sent a soldier to summon the bhat. His wife came along too. Though the family had become Christians and Rayanna was now Martin Barrett and his son was Vincent Barrett, everyone still referred to him as the bhat.

  ‘I’ll give your son a job in the church,’ Padre Colaso told the man. ‘He’ll have to do whatever I ask him to. He must ring a bell and carry information about a Mass or a feast or a death all over the village. He must ring the church bells every morning and evening. He’ll be paid from the church funds and it will be enough to keep his belly filled,’ the priest said.

  ‘You’ll go back to your home across the ocean some day. The temple belonged to us, the church is ours today. It’s like dying and being born again, why did we ever resent that death! Let our family be in charge of all the rituals in the church, like we used to be in the temple. We’ll manage as best as we can…’ the bhat urged.

  Padre Colaso smiled. ‘The church will certainly be yours some day. The King of Portugal will come and present it to you himself. You will be carried around in a decorated palanquin and eat on golden plates after that. But right now there’s only this job that’s available. If you don’t want it, say so. You can hitch up your loincloth and go and wallow in the muddy fields.’

  Padre Colaso gave Vincent a small bell and sent him around the village. ‘Go to each settlement and tell the people that the first Mass will be celebrated in the new church on Sunday morning. Everyone must be fully dressed when they come for the ceremony. The padre will not come to your settlement any longer, you must come to the church.’

  There were some thirty or forty prison cells in a row. Padre Simao Peres knew that some wretched prisoner was locked up in the cell next to his own, but he couldn’t see the man. All he could see were the high walls. When the iron gate of the cell was opened, he could see a bit of the outside world, but there too, he could see only walls. Who built these walls? Who felt the need for these structures that have caused so much sorrow in this world? He yearned to demolish all walls, external and internal – walls that confined him unjustly to a fate like death. How free and beautiful was the life outside!

  The prisoner in the adjoining cell had been moaning continuously for the last four days. It sounded like the groans of a dying man though Simao Peres couldn’t see him. The attendant who brought the prisoner’s meals often yelled at him, but the man said nothing, merely continued to moan … He died one day and his body was taken out of his cell and placed beside the wall. Simao Peres could see it clearly through the iron bars of the gate … a bony ribcage, hip bones sticking out, a skull with two sunken eye sockets … a heap of bones.

  A tremor ran through the priest. My body is also turning into a pile of bones. Death approaches me too, he thought, clawing fiercely at his own flesh as he collapsed by the gate of his cell. Why did they arrest that wretched creature, did he refuse to add salt to the rice boiling in the pot or did he water the tulsi plant in the courtyard? Did he celebrate his daughter’s engagement with Hindu rituals? Did he refuse to eat cow flesh or did he fast during an eclipse? They will dig out these bones from his grave and burn them, as punishment, on the Day of Judgement.

  The last rites for the dead man would be neither Christian nor Hindu nor Jewish, a funeral sanctioned by no known faith. Was this freedom? He would get no Mass, no Christian burial rites because he was a traitor who had betrayed the Christian faith. His soul would remain restless without religious sanction, this death was like the death of an animal!

  A wave of hopelessness and profound sorrow washed over Simao Peres when they carried the corpse away and he began to rant, ‘Burn me to death! I’ll come back to life, like Jesus. I trudged all the way from the Vatican to Adolshi bearing the weight of the cross. Jesus’s crown of thorns is embedded in my heart … I’ll break out of this prison and carry His teachings all over the world…’

  The guard rushed to the cell and smote him with his stick forcing him to be silent. The priest buried his head between his knees and began to weep soundlessly.

  In a short while, the door opened and the prison warden appeared. ‘It’s been three months since you came here. You will appear before the Holy Inquisition for the first hearing now.’ Simao Peres dried his eyes and straightened his clothes. The warden marched ahead, followed by Simao Peres with two guards behind him. The priest walked slowly and his footsteps faltered as they moved towards the main hall. He’d been tall and well-built, but now his flesh hung loosely from his bones.

  They walked down the long verandah past innumerable little cells till they reached a large door. The warden ushered him into a hall and retreated with the guards. Everything was quiet and peaceful as the sounds from the prison cells did not carry into this place. The grave and solemn atmosphere frightened the priest. He felt as though a naked sword hovered over his head.

  There was a large crucifix, ten feet tall, on the wall. In front of it was a big table around which were several chairs with arms, a few stools and a bench. The Chief Inquisitor and his Deputy sat on the chairs and a secretary sat on a stool nearby. There were two lawyers too, one would advise the officials of the Inquisition while the other would represent the accused. Not a muscle twitched on their faces. They sat there as though carved in stone. The Chief Inquisitor, with his bulging cheeks, broad forehead and clear, dark eyes must have been quite humane and kind-hearted in the past. Perhaps it was his role as the head of this draconian institution that forced him to adopt a cruel, merciless mask. His assistant was a Dominican priest with sagging cheeks and sunken grey eyes.

  ‘You must bow down before the Holy assembly gathered here,’ the secretary said, as Simao Peres approached the large table. When Simao made no move to do so, the secretary got up from his seat and said in a louder tone, ‘It is your duty to bow down before this Holy assembly.’


  The priest raised his eyes to the large crucifix, went down on his knees and made the sign of the cross on his breast. When he identified himself as Padre Simao Peres, the Chief Inquisitor, Padre Alex Dias Falcao, was quick to retort, ‘You must not refer to yourself as a Christian priest any longer. You have been stripped of your priesthood for performing acts that go against the faith. You can call yourself a priest only if you are proved innocent.’

  The officials asked him the name of the church in which he was baptized. They enquired whether he had received a list of the possessions that had been confiscated from his shack at the time of his arrest.

  ‘I had no possessions. I worked selflessly for the Christian faith. I slept on a length of sack cloth and used a stone as a pillow, like Padre Francis Xavier did,’ he said.

  The Chief Inquisitor was furious. ‘Don’t take Francis Xavier’s name! You are a sinner and have betrayed our faith.’

  Everyone remained quiet for a while.

  ‘Did you resist the officials when they came to arrest you? Did you ask Tomas, the new convert who was deputed to protect you, to attack them with his sword?’

  ‘No. It was his job to protect me. He did what he thought was right. Perhaps he was wrong. I believe he was wrong.’

  ‘Do you know the charges you face and the reason you have been thrown into prison?’ the Chief Inquisitor asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You have spoken disrespectfully about the Holy Cross, the sacred emblem of Christianity. You have said that the cross on the hill was merely a stone structure, that there was nothing sacred about it. You condoned that vile act. We have examined the witnesses who testified against you.’

  ‘Who are these witnesses? Why don’t they appear before me?’

  ‘We are not bound to give you their names. Nor will they appear before you. The onus is on you to prove that you are innocent and have committed no crime. Is there anyone who will testify on your behalf?’