The women, the mothers, rise and lend their voices: “Yesu, Yesu, Yesu!” What alternative do husbands have? The men rise: “Yesu, Yesu, Yesu!” The bishops and priests, models of Christian reticence and propriety, are in a bind, because there’s something unholy about such unbridled passion, not to mention the bizarre translation. But how can they keep quiet when their Savior’s name is being sung out? They join in. “Yesu, Yesu, Yesu!”
Chanting like this has never before been heard at the staid convention. The crowd is drunk with sound and cannot stop. Uplift Master feels the hairs rise on the back of his neck. Glory, glory, glory! Surely the Holy Spirit is here. He scans the crowd for Shoshamma’s face. Now do you see the passion?! Rory winks at him.
After a long time, the chanting finally gives way to thunderous clapping, the crowd applauding itself. The potten is received back in the children’s section like Jesus entering Jerusalem, and his cheering friends lift him off the ground. The audience take their seats, smiling at each other, shocked at having broken their self-inflicted decorum.
“My friends, my friends,” McGillicutty says. He takes Matthew 25:33 as his text, pointing it out to Uplift Master. “The Lord will measure our lives on Judgment Day, and my dear friends . . .” McGillicutty holds the open Bible to his chest and comes to the edge of the stage, looking as if he might cry. He falls to one knee and points his trembling finger heavenward. “Mark my words, we’ll have to ANSWER to him!”
Uplift Master thinks this is proof that the Holy Spirit is indeed present, as McGillicutty came up with the same verse as Lenin. Master, also clutching his Bible, falls to one knee, but artfully hiking up his mundu first. He translates: “God sits in a gold kasera like the one on your verandah, only a hundred times bigger. He will measure our lives on Judgment Day. If the Lord lets you enter His kingdom, it will be kappa and meen curry for all your days. But if not, you’ll go to the other place. Do you remember the abandoned well on that property where what’s-their-name fell in, and no rope was ever long enough to go that far down?” (He’s confident that everyone has some version of that tragedy.) “Those depths are nothing compared to where you’ll be going. The serpents that live down there have bred with fallen humans for so long that the place is populated by creatures with fangs, human hands with claws on the ends, and a serpent’s body.”
He has no idea where these words are coming from other than the Holy Spirit. He spots Coconut Kurian in the audience, glowering at him, arms locked across his chest, and Master continues before McGillicutty can go on: “Let’s say you’re there because you hoarded coconuts and jacked up the price, think of how it will feel to live with those creatures biting and clawing you and coiled around you for all eternity.”
There are gasps—he’s gone too far. No one’s ever spoken in such graphic fashion at the Maramon Convention. On the other hand, there’s little love lost for hoarders.
“Let Him in, my brethren. He is knocking,” McGillicutty says in an impassioned voice, tears in his eyes. “Open your hearts to the Lord. Clothe your neighbor. Comfort him when he is in sorrow. Remember in Matthew, ‘I was ill, and you cared for me, I was hungry, and you fed me . . .’ ”
Uplift Master, for once, translates word for word then adds: “Year after year, when our loved ones are sick, we take them by bus and train far, far away for help, and only if we have the money. Year after year, our loved ones give up the ghost for lack of a hospital like Vellore here in Kerala! Together we could build ten first-class hospitals, but we spend the money enlarging our cow sheds! The Lord says, ‘Build my hospital!’ Did you not hear it? Did you not call out His name? Let’s make history. Each of you, take those notes out of your pocket.” Uplift Master pulls out a bundle of notes from the tuck-in fold of his mundu. It’s money from the sale of their paddy, money that he was supposed to deposit. “My wife has bid me to give generously!”
He puts the notes one by one into the donation basket on the stage, so people can see the color. Somewhere in the crowd, he’s sure he hears Shoshamma gasp. The ushers jump to life, passing baskets left and right, and even those faithful outside the tent on the riverbanks find they cannot retreat, because ushers with baskets block their way.
“What are we waiting for?” says McGillicutty, who understands this phase of a meeting all too well, though he’s puzzled at how his translator has gotten ahead of him. “Remember Luke 6:38. ‘Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap.’ ”
Uplift Master translates the verse, while McGillicutty pulls bills out of his own pocket to put in the hamper.
Uplift Master can hear the workings of the crowd’s mind, the influence of Doubting Thomas. Aah, where will such a hospital be? Aah, what is the hurry? Why not the government do this? Why not?
The parents of the potten come on stage with their son. The wife takes off her bangles, then the gold chain on her neck, and puts them into the basket that Rory holds out. The father gives his chain. McGillicutty cries, “God bless you!”
Then, to Uplift Master’s astonishment, comes Big Ammachi, all by herself, surprising her family who are still in their seats. She stands there, a tiny figure on the stage, and unscrews her kunukku from each earlobe. Then she unfastens her chain. Now her thirteen-year-old granddaughter, Mariamma, as well as Anna Chedethi rush up to join her, slipping off their bangles and necklaces.
Uplift Master says, “For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you. Do you understand? The Holy Spirit is observing! Put nothing now and reap nothing forever. Nothing!”
Now a line forms to go onstage, as if gold is being handed out and not handed in. To the astonishment of the clergy, men and women are peeling gold from ears, fingers, wrists . . . It’s a day when no one holds back. Because if there’s one thing Malayalis fear, it’s missing out when there’s reaping to be done.
CHAPTER 61
The Calling
1964, Parambil
“A miracle!” Big Ammachi says as they wait for the bus home. Her hands unconsciously flutter to her earlobes, to their unaccustomed weightlessness. “I’ve prayed for a clinic at Parambil for years. Today, the Lord intervened through our Uplift Master. Not only a clinic, but there will also be a hospital at Parambil. Like the one at Vellore!”
Philipose is uncertain. “But Ammachi, it doesn’t mean that if they build a hospital, it will be in Parambil—”
“It will be!” She whips around to face him, her expression one of such conviction and resolve that he’s silenced. “We must do everything to make it so! In Parambil!”
On the bus, Mariamma studies her grandmother with pride and wonderment; she has never seen her this excited. Mariamma can’t believe what unfolded on stage, and how moved she herself was, caught up in the excitement. Those emotions are mixed up with her pleasure at seeing Lenin, who has gone overnight from boy to man, albeit a man shorn of hair. He’s almost fourteen. She saw him studying her. Her thirteen-year-old body has changed too and he was tongue-tied when he came up to greet her before the speeches began. She wonders if Big Ammachi or her father noticed.
But the convention felt different for another reason this year, one that was disturbing. When they first approached the tents and walked past the usual lengthy line of beggars, the sight had unnerved her. Her uneasiness about the crippled and maimed had lingered long after they sat down. Now, on the bus, she confides this to her grandmother.
“Before, the beggars were just there. An unpleasant sight, a bit scary, but no more than other unpleasant things one must see.”
“Ayo! Those are people, Mariamma, not things.”