Minds in Communion

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen!” the captains’ voice blared through the speakers, startling the passengers. “We have reached out destination so I request our dear passengers to strap on your seatbelts till we touchdown. Thank you for travelling with Lufthansa.”

Rahul tried strapping on the seatbelt with his fumbling hands but couldn’t just manage it. This was the first time he had boarded a plane and he was suffering the consequences. The passenger beside his was kind enough to help him put him on and he quickly mumbled his thanks. He then wrapped his fingers around the arm rest so hard that his knuckles had started becoming white but he didn’t notice it.

Rahul’s story begins from a small place near Mumbai. He had been a sunny kid, impressing teachers and parents alike, like a perfect Indian child who was expected to score top marks. But his life was all but perfect. He was perfect in his grades but he had no friends. He had become rich due to the heavy pile of shining degrees but was not content with his life. He felt very lonely and was still so.

Until he met Patrick.

We not exactly met. They had met over Facebook and their friendship had grown ever since. Patrick hailed from Greece. He father was Greek and his mother was English.

They had chatted for hours even with the time difference between the two countries. Rahul was unbelievable happy as Patrick was his only friend whom he could trust completely, though they have never met, in person.

And now, Rahul was travelling to Greece on Patrick’s request. Patrick had called him to show him the biggest festival in Greece.

Easter.

Soon the plane touches down on the runway smoothly and Rahul slowly releases his fingers from the tight grip it had on the arm rest all the way. Soon the blood returned to the vessels after he flexed his fingers uneasily. He wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans and unclipped the seatbelt. He got up and pulled out his briefcase from the shelf on top of his head along with a long overcoat that he had bought to beat the cold temperatures in Greece. He put it on, took up the briefcase and walked out of the gateway, smiling courteously at an awaiting air hostess. She smiled back and said, “We hope to see you again sir.”

He nodded and walked out through the passageway connecting the plane to the airport. He started following another newly married Indian couple as he had no idea where to go. But he observed things around him. The heavily armed security personnel vigilantly on guard with a sniff dog made him smile.

If only India had this at least in the Taj, he thought to himself, a lot less lives may have been lost.

He continued through the winding passageways until he found the baggage portal. Bags were rolling into view and quickly disappeared out into another opening on the other side. Within a minute, he spotted his own bag and he pulled it out. He then started walking towards what seemed to be the exit but it turned out to be the restroom. He then asked one of the security personnel the way out. The man pointed him the direction and he soon was out into the cold weather. He shivered as he rubbed his hands and air into them, trying to make them warm.

He looked around for the familiar face of Patrick. There was a loud thronging crowd assembled in an extremely unruly fashion so finding one single particular face was extremely difficult, even more when one has seen the person only in pictures.

He looked about wide eyed when he noticed someone at the back yelling, “Rahul!” in a funny accent. He zeroed down on the face and after a moment, recognized the face. His own face broke into a wide grin as he started moving towards the end of the passenger line to meet him. Within a minute, he was out and he met Patrick, for the first time. In person.

“Well, hello there, Rahul!” he started in his funny accent, “How was the flight?”

“Good enough.” Rahul answered, still reeling from the effects of flying.

“Well come on! First we’ll move to my home and you’ll have some rest. The festival starts tomorrow!”

Rahul’s face brightened, “I’d love that, Patrick!”

“Come on then! My vehicle is right over there.” he said, joyously.

They started walking in that direction. He puts the bags behind the backseat of the car and himself sits beside Patrick in the car.

“So what is this Easter?” Rahul asks, nonchalantly.

“You seriously don’t know what is Easter?”

“Truthfully, no.”

“Easter is a particularly important holiday for Greeks, topping even Christmas. This sacred day among Greece cultural events is celebrated vigorously throughout Greece,” Patrick started, firing up the engine of the car and switching on the internal heater, “The celebrations begin on Good Friday with processions leading out of the main village or neighbourhood churches. During these processions, the Epithaphio, or tomb of Christ, is decorated with flowers and carried from the church to the cemetery. After Christ is laid to rest, everybody lights a candle and the people return the church to kiss an image of Christ.”

“That’s a lot!”

“There’s more. The next day, we Greeks prepare for midnight mass. Just before midnight, the lights of the church are turned off and when midnight falls, the priest lights a candle, which he uses to light the candle of the closest person to him. This flame is passed to all while the priest chants the Byzantine religious chant of Christos Anesti. People then move outside where they celebrate with fireworks and exchange the sayings, Christos Anestis and Alithos Anesti. These translate to “God has arisen” and “yes He has”. Later that night, families return home for a large feast called the “Resurrection Meal”. On Sunday, the feast continues and people celebrate with wine and ouzo long into the night. During Easter, it is customary to dye eggs red for the blood of Christ. It is also customary for Godparents to buy a candle, new shoes and clothes for their godchildren. In many villages, the streets and outsides of homes are whitewashed as white signifies purity and Godliness.”

“Is that it?” Rahul asked in a sarcastic monotone.

“Hmm. Yes, that’s about it. It starts tomorrow. So take rest today. We have a big day tomorrow.”

The rest of the day passed uneventfully. They together had a sumptuous dinner of traditional Greek chicken pasta and finished the meal with the delicious desert of Greek Galaktoboureko – a kind of custard pie. They went to sleep soon after that.

They get up early in the morning to see the processions. They had eaten a quick breakfast of bread and two sunny sides up. Then they went out.

They could see people swarming outside to visit the church.

“Where are we headed now?”

“To the church to pray quickly and then we are going to pick up Christ’s highly decorated tomb and follow a procession out of the village to a cemetery where the tomb will be laid to rest.”

“Okay.”

They continue walking down the road. Rahul looked about incredulously as hundreds of people started swarming like bees near the gate of the church. They quickly enter the church. A priest spoke hymns from the Bible for sometime, which Rahul had a difficult time understanding. He just looked about the church, at the hanging murals of Mother Mary holding Baby Jesus and another of Jesus’ crucifixion.

Soon the prayers were over and the people started walking out of the church and some of the important looking people carried a tomb. Fragrant flowers adorned the white covering over the tomb and the smell was almost intoxicating as it passed by Rahul. He took in a deep breath to take in as much as he could but as it passed away, he exhaled heavily, pursing his lips, thinking what is there inside the tomb? He knew for a fact that it was believed to have Jesus’ body inside but how could that be possible. But Jesus had once said, if you have faith, you can move mountains. If that happens to be the case, then Jesus’ body must be inside!

He wanted to ask Patrick but he decided otherwise as that might have hurt his feelings. So he pushed those thoughts out of his mind and concentrated on taking pictures. The procession went on slowly. After about half an hour, the people reached the cemetery just outside the village boundary.

The cemetery was nestled between beautiful green mountains on either side and a blue river flowed by. He could see real conifer trees which he had seen only in movies. He constantly took pictures.

He looked ahead and saw that the grave for the burial was already dug neatly. The people carefully place it into the grave. Then they lighted candles and placed them all around the grave. Then they pray silently for a minute or two and then two men pick up spades and start covering mud over it.

After about fifteen minutes, the people return to the church to kiss the image of Christ. After that, they return to Patrick’s house.

“Have you ever noticed human race tends to think similarly even though they never have been able to communicate to spread ideas?” Rahul once started.

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean is that in a particular time period in history, humans tend to think similarly even though they may be apart by thousands of kilometres. I’ll give you an example. We know for a fact that Hindu is one of the oldest religions, origins of which are still obscured by the passage of time. Also ancient Greek culture is extremely old, with unknown origins. Roman culture is more of an evolved form of Greek culture, just a bit more aggressive. So, in our Hindu belief systems, Indra is the king of Gods and his primary weapon is the thunderbolt. If you see into ancient Greek or Roman culture, Zeus or Jupiter is the king of Gods and his primary weapon too is the thunderbolt. There’s Poseidon or Neptune whose primary weapon happens to be a trident which is also possessed by Shiva and it is called the trishul.”

“I have never thought about it like that!”

“There’s more! Jewish culture is also considered to be as old as Hinduism as well. In their stories, God had once told Noah to build a huge boat to save the animal and plant species as there was going to be a huge flood. You must know the story of Noah’s Ark.”

“Yes! Yes!”

“Even in our Hindu myths, Vishnu, one of the main Gods of our belief had come down to earth in the form of a fish or the matsya avatar and had asked a man to make a boat to save all plant and animal species and when the great deluge came on, Vishnu in the form of a fish of humongous proportions and had steered the ship by tying a rope to a horn on his head and led it to safety. I find this very exhilarating and interesting!”

“It surely is. I have never thought like this! I would like to study more myself!”

Rahul smiled, quite flattered.

The rest of the day passed by having some more traditional Greek delicacies. For dinner, Rahul had insisted upon making some tandoori chicken with roti, a traditional Mughlai delicacy. He procured most of his supplies from a local organic produce store but he had brought some spices were from India. Rahul prepared the tandoori using the conventional oven in Patrick’s house for baking cakes. Patrick bravely tried it out but ended up drinking up a litre of water after that. Soon, his tongue grew accustomed to the spice and he started relishing it. The dinner ended happily and they both went to sleep soon after that.

“Let’s have a quick nap. We have to get up before midnight.”

“Midnight?”

“Why, haven’t you been listening? We have a midnight gathering at the church!”

“Okay. Please call me, I am a deep sleeper and I don’t have a habit of getting up at midnights!” Rahul said with a wink.

“Sure!” Patrick said, ignoring the slight mock.

Minutes flew by as the bell rang precisely fifteen minutes before midnight. Patrick sits up straight and the goes and calls Rahul. He wakes up at an instant, and soon they are out of the house.

“Why are all the lights off?”

“You’ll see.”

Soon they gather at the church, jostling about in the sheer huge number of people assembled there. There was barely space to even sit.

“Here.” Patrick says, handing Rahul a candle, “You’ll need this.”

“What is going to happen?” Rahul asked, accepting the candle.

“The main priest is going to pray and light a candle which he will pass on to the person next to him. Thus it will reach you and you will pass it on to me. I will do the same for the person next to me and soon the whole room will become bright with candle light.”

Rahul was amazed by this. “Stunning!”

Patrick smiled self – consciously on the comment.

There was a low humming as the priests were praying and suddenly after a few minutes a bright flame lighted up. Soon the flame began spreading and quickly enough it reached Rahul and he passed it on to Patrick with a smile. Within a few minutes, the initial darkness of the night had been converted into bright flickering lights that illuminated the entire room. All this while, the priests were continuously chanting the words Christos Anesti which translates into God has Risen. Soon the people in the church file out through the gate and huge firecrackers went off into the midnight sky, illuminating the night almost into day.

The next day, Patrick takes Rahul to his friends’ house for the ‘Resurrection Meal’. Thus we see how two people from diverse societies can merge, their ideas flow as one into a stronger and broader river. This is the quintessence of human life that two people from diverse places separated by over a thousand miles can come together, unbarred by the situations, faiths or anything else. This is why we should unite for the greater good, not fight among ourselves.