Easter invariably evokes nostalgic memories of the service we children used to attend in a small church in a tea estate near Munnar in the 1950s. Before the Mass we kids would unobtrusively hang around the sacristy at the rear of the church to watch Father Marian— the bearded, beetle-browed and burly Spanish missionary— at a fascinating ‘ritual’: He would pour wine carefully into a small cruet for the service.
Then he would cork the wine bottle tight and check the level of wine in it before putting it away safely—perhaps to prevent anyone from being tempted to take a swig, naively mistaking it to be an answer to prayer! Fr Marian brooked no disturbance during the Mass, scowling at and staring down fidgety kids. Bawling infants would be quickly whisked out by their mothers.
And the troublesome sparrows, alarmed by the irate gesticulations that accompanied his impassioned sermons, would temporarily suspend their sorties inside the small church. In those days no mobile phones ‘sang’ during the service as they often do now—Fr Marian would’ve had a fit of apoplexy! Once during a sermon a rickety wooden bench collapsed under the burden of its heavyweight occupants, creating a commotion that disrupted the priest’s train of thought.
The long, baleful glare that he directed at the sacristan for his negligence in not checking the bench would have frozen a lesser mortal. To impress the other kids, when the collection plate was brought around, we would ostentatiously dig deep into our trouser pockets to fish out a two-anna coin from between the folds of a snotty hanky and slip it into the plate, all the while acutely conscious of the altar boy’s smirk when he spotted the trifle we had coughed up! Of course, he didn’t know that we were sacrificing a week’s pocket money.
Sometimes the altar boys got carried away and rang the altar bells a trifle too lustily and long. Fr Marian would promptly frown, following it up with a reproachful stare at them. Assuredly, they would get a dressing down after the Mass. In the sacristan’s absence we boys gladly rang the church bell—usually with more enthusiasm than skill. Indeed, the lightweights among us clung to the rope and enjoyed being repeatedly lifted off the ground by the bell’s swing. Those were swinging times indeed!