As if being a mallu is not challenging enough, I am an Orthodox Syrian Christian as well. (Yes, yes descendants of the first Christians in India, blah, blah). The Catholics had atleast three masses, the Methodist service lasted less than an hour and the Marthomites had two services every Sunday. We had only one and that too around one and a half hours. Our ‘namaskaram’ or invocation started at 8.30 and ‘qurbana’ proper started at 9.00. In my house Sunday was ‘gun’day, that was the day mom used to cajole, scold and threaten us with dire fallouts if we didnt go to church on time and that included not having beef curry on the Sunday lunch menu.
I bettered her commands, and used to leave pretty early and sometimes without having breakfast. This was not because I was St. Thomas in the making, but to escape my mom’s incessant babble. It had its good effects though, my mom used to tell my brother and sister, “Look at him and learn, he even fasts on Sunday”. And for that day atleast I could irritate them while having ‘immunity’ like in the Survivor Series.
Church was far from being a place of peace and calm; for young boys like me it was a battlefield. It was the place were you had to fight for recognition. One of the contests was the ’Order of the Money Bag’. In our church during the service money bags used to be passed around to collect offerings, this was an effective way of collecting money before bored believers left to beat the rush at Abdulla’s Meat Stall in Russell Market. (An unofficial poll conducted among Syrian Christians in Bangalore proved that one, among the many, reasons for going to church on Sundays was to pick up fish and meat on the way home.)
Coming to the ‘Order of the Money Bag’, the bag had to be picked from the table in front of the ’madbahah’ (the sanctum sanctorum) and passed around, collected and placed back on the table. Every Sunday two boys offered themselves to do the honours. What’s the big deal in that? you ask? Well, lots. Its is a series of contests bundled into one. You score if you reach the bag first, going to men’s section is another opportunity, bringing back the filled money bag first is the third one. It needed a lot of planning, the timing and the placement has to be spot on. There is a particular song that signaled the beginning of the duel, though it is in malayalam to me it always sounded like ‘let the games begin’. You have to spring out of your place at just the right time, too early and over 500 pairs of eyes would glare at you, a second late and your rival wins.
Going to the men’s section was a sure shot winner, men tend to be generally faster while dropping the money and passing on the bag. Women would take longer, as they dipped into their cavernous hand bags, then checked for the right denomination held it for a bit longer for their immediate neighbours to see and then dropped it with a flourish. Therefore the contestant who got the ladies’ section was bound to be late.
Ranjith and I had worked around this well. We tried as much as possible to go for the bags together. We alternated every Sunday on who took the men’s section, and the one who did waited for the other to finish with the ladies and we walked back together to return the velvet money bags.
Both winners, we ruled the roost for a long time. We were the Knights of the Order of the Money Bags.
