The house of Sankaran on Vali street of Thangagramam was a picture in contrast. Among the row of little brick huts, that formed the landscape of this most neglected part of the village, Sankaran’s house was a pathetic mud structure, its roof half-covered with leaves and thatches, and the door ordained by a modest-sized symbol of his faith – ॐ. The doors of other houses, on the other hand, displayed large crosses proudly declaring their occupants’ embrace of a faith that claimed to bring them salvation from all the miseries that they had been brought up in and didn’t foresee an escape from in any imaginable future.
Sankaran belonged to the lowliest of all castes in the village’s society – a scavenging caste that, though central to the village eco-system, was always discriminated against. People of his caste were never included in any of the village festivals; they were banned from using common public spaces and utilities, and were not even allowed entry inside the village temple – the only abode of the Lord in whose eyes all men and women, as Sankaran had often heard as a little kid from his parents, were equal and worthy.
The Vali street lay on the outskirts of the village where no one of a nobler birth ever ventured near. It formed a part of the world conveniently forgotten and ignored by everyone else in the village. Centuries after centuries, generations after generations, and rulers after rulers came and went, but Vali street continued to languish in misery and sorrow. Not many had complained though. It was all considered a part of the justice system that God had designed around the actions of all things in this world – the system of Karma.
Sankaran too had been brought up in the same philosophy. His parents had often told him that their birth in the lowest caste was God’s way of punishing them for the bad deeds they had committed in their previous lives and that they must ensure that they lead a life of virtue if they seek salvation from this misery in their next birth. It was their unshakeable faith in this system that even a mention of conversion to another religion, and by that act defy what was ordained for them by God, horrified them to the extreme.
They had led good lives, Sankaran mused, and had died peaceful deaths, all in the unwavering devotion to God and his promise of salvation. But he had his own doubts. Life was becoming increasingly difficult to lead for him and his family. The world, it seemed to him, had moved on much faster than he had. The world that he now witnessed around him wore snazzy clothes, drove fancy cars, and lived in palaces. Deep in his heart he felt cheated by the society, by his parents, and by God for making him believe that he had no place in that new world. He wanted his children to study, wanted to buy them good clothes, wanted them to lead a life of respect, wanted them to be a part of the new world, but he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t afford it. He couldn’t take up any other profession even if he wanted to, not just because he didn’t know anything about anything else other than scavenging, but also because no one would let him. It was almost as if he was tied to a pole by a rope sanctioned by divinity frequently impaled by a spear designed by the society and then forced to keep his mouth shut and accept his agony and pain as his rewards.
But things were changing now. Ten years ago a group of very fair people dressed in a strange attire and speaking a strange language had come to the village. They were indeed strange because they did what was unthinkable for the rest of the villagers – enter Vali street. They knocked on every door, spoke to everyone, and offered everyone clothing, food, and money. And they did this at every house in the street. They had come to Sankaran’s house too, he remembered. Sankaran’s father, his face crimson, his eyes burning with rage, his fists closed, and his mouth uttering expletives that he had never imagined his father would ever utter, had literally driven them out of their house and had sternly warned them to not venture anywhere near his house or his family ever. He had realized later that those were missionaries, who had arrived professing a new God, a new religion, and a new promise of respite from their miseries.
Sankaran’s father may have despised those missionaries but to his dismay the others didn’t share either his reason or his faith in Karma. Slowly but surely, one by one, every family on Vali street deserted the faith of their forefathers and embraced the new faith that had come knocking on their doors. The missionaries promised them new jobs, promised their children education in their schools, promised them the opportunity to break the shackles of their caste that they had been chained with and join the new world taking shape around them. Over the last ten years Sankaran had witnessed some of those promises being fulfilled, and how God, contrary to what he had been made to believe, didn’t seem to mind this apostasy. He had wondered why. Was it that his God was waiting for an opportunity to teach the defectors a lesson? Would he have to face His wrath if he too followed others and accepted the alien faith? He had now his doubts. He was beginning to feel that the God of the missionaries was indeed the real God and that the God he had believed in was nothing but a punitive manifestation of the Upper castes’ desire to subjugate them.
The previous day the pastor from the local chapel had come to visit him. He counseled Sankaran to accept the word of Christ and open the world of opportunities that he had deprived himself of all these years. He left a book and a cross at his house and asked him to come to the chapel and receive the blessings of God.
