AKSHI AND MEENA An Offering to St George I am not all right, father. If only I could talk to you about the pain in my heart. The loss. The nostalgia. The regret of beginnings without ends. The intangibility of beauty born not of physical perfection but of conjunction of impossible and immaterial factors. The fear of the feeling that I have seen Sarasa for the last time. The guilt for which I cannot ask absolution from Akshi and Meena. Rajus attention is diverted by Ibrahim handing some coins to the cleaner boy on the bus. The boy reties his simple turban, which is a multi-purpose piece of cloth (to wipe sweat, swat flies, dust seats, shut out the sun, and so on), and turns to the offerings box built into the base of the stone steps leading up to the church and pushes the coins through the slot into the box. Geevarghese punyalan, as St George is known in Malayalam, is famous mainly for protecting people from snakebites, but if you go past his church without making an offering you are more likely to meet with an accident. Pokam, pokam. Lets go, lets go, the cleaner cries, rushing back to the bus and waving his turban, which is furling and unfurling in the breeze. Pokam, pokam, before a rival bus goes past and snatches our customers. The bus kicks off again, in second gear by the sound of it, leaving a cloud of dust and, it seems, the cleaner boy behind. But he sprints out of the cloud -- the disappearing act in reverse -- and competes with the bus and beats it; with ahop, step and jump he is safely in and the flying door bangs shut.
Posted on: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 06:45:14 +0000