The House of Blue Mangoes by David Davidar Page A

will she be Mary too?’
    ‘No, she will not be Mary. I’ll find her a name. Get me my shirt and trousers, I’m going to visit the Christian priest.’
    Father Ashworth received Vakeel Perumal in the front room of the parsonage.
    ‘Good morning, aiyah. I’m Jesus Christ,’ Vakeel Perumal began.
    The priest wasn’t sure he had heard right and asked with exquisite courtesy, ‘Can I offer you some tea?’
    It took a few moments of puzzled conversation before Father Ashworth worked out the purpose of the lawyer’s visit. It had been so long since anyone had come to him asking to be baptized into the faith that it took him a while to come to terms with Vakeel Perumal’s request. Then he grew suspicious. In all the time that he had known the lawyer, he hadn’t detected the slightest interest in Christianity in him. He began quizzing him, and his suspicions deepened. Vakeel Perumal seemed to know very little about the religion. Sensing the priest’s hostility, Vakeel Perumal quickly said that he was prepared to install an idol of Jesus Christ in his prayer room that very day, to which his family and he would do pooja.
    ‘Christianity does not encourage that form of worship,’ the priest observed.
    ‘Yes, yes,’ Vakeel Perumal replied, flustered, ‘we won’t do pooja.’
    Father Ashworth was about to rise and show his visitor out when Christ’s injunction to His apostles in the Sermon on the Mount came to mind: ‘Judge not that ye be not judged . . .’ Father Ashworth looked at the man before him, and despite his misgivings heard himself say, ‘To be baptized into the one true faith is the greatest gift that any human being can receive.’ As he said this to the lawyer, another image rose in the priest’s mind: of Saul on the road to Damascus. No light illuminated the figure of the lawyer but the glory of Christ’s love had transformed worse men. If the Lord had commanded the man before him to cast off his old raiment and put on the garments of Christ, who was he, Paul Ashworth, ineffectual fisher of men, to object? And his bishop was certain to be pleased. After years of drought this flood of converts (for the lawyer claimed, untruthfully, that in addition to his own family, there were ten others who wanted to become Christians) would be very welcome.
    Before the lawyer left, the padre invited him with his family to Easter service the next day and provided him with two editions of the New Testament. He also gave him a choice of Christian names, gently dissuading him from Jesus Christ. They finally settled on Peter Jesu for Vakeel Perumal, Mary for Kamala, and Martha and Hannah for Vasanthi and Nirmala respectively.
    Back in his own house, Vakeel Perumal was well pleased with the morning’s activities. He was glad he hadn’t given in to a stray impulse to confess that he’d been behind the attack on the Andavar girl. He had vaguely heard that Christians confessed to priests, but what if the priest told Solomon? He had been disappointed that the priest couldn’t baptize him immediately, but cheered up when Father Ashworth said he would be received into the faith in a fortnight.
    Vakeel Perumal put aside the preoccupation of the morning and focused on work that had been interrupted by his reading of the article on Easter. It was a letter to the Hindu , the fifty-fourth in a series that he had sent to the newspaper at the rate of one a fortnight. The fact that only one letter had been published didn’t faze him at all. This was something he did in between his other schemes, and he intended to keep it up until the editor gave in and began publishing him regularly.
    Today’s letter was little different in substance from the fifty-three letters that had preceded it.
    Respected Sir, [Vakeel Perumal wrote]
    I would like to draw the attention of the esteemed readers of your great newspaper to the monstrous indignity visited upon the whole clan of persons known as the Andavars. As every member of the Tamil race