George Menezes

Today is Good Friday. As I write this, I am transported to a Good Friday service I attended as a child on the island of Divar in the parish of the Church of San Mathias.
The whole incredible and heart-wrenching happening in Jerusalem two thousand odd years earlier was enacted with local colour, sound and smell in a manner that would have dumbfounded not only the Romans, the Jews and the Gentiles but would have brought about a complete change of heart in the numerous Judases taking part in it.
It left a lasting impression on me, anyway. When I say “lasting impression” I am talking of the impression on my delicate and tender feet. I was too young at that time to understand the “passion of Jesus”. Nor that grown up people understood it any better. If they did, they would have removed their mournful masks and rejoiced during the season of Lent in the knowledge that through suffering, victory over darkness was around the corner. I did not realise all this as I walked with my mother in the procession wearing brand new black patent leather shoes several sizes too small for my feet.
This was not the ordinary feast day procession around the Chapel a few houses away from where we lived. The procession started from our Chapel appropriately named, Nossa Senhora des Agonizantes ( Our Lady of Agony) and made its way several kilometers to our Church on the hill. Since we lived near the chapel we had to join the procession at the commencement of the journey unlike my friend Simao who came in half-way. Nobody ever missed the Good Friday procession. Everybody came because it was Good Friday but quite a few also came because it was a Good Show. Priests prostrating themselves so flat on the chapel floor that they had serious problems getting back on their feet without help, leading to juicy conjectures about the conditions of our pastors. Purple vestments, canopies, candles, incense and the rattle of wooden bells. And centre stage, Jesus in human form carrying a solid wooden cross to Golgotha along a red mud road in the relentless afternoon sun.
It was the only quiet, prayerful procession that took place in the village. Even funeral processions that took place at regular were far from solemn, laced as they were with whispered conversations about who was doing what and to whom!
The silence of this procession was the last thing I needed. Because my sobs, telling my mother that my feet hurt like the crown on the Saviour’s head, could be heard loud and clear above the barking of the dogs along the way and the premature announcements of a once-Latin-scholar, now dead drunk, who ran along the procession shouting “mortus est, sepultus est, ubi fuit?”
If there had not been fourteen stations of the cross where I got some repose, my feet would have been due for amputation. The stops were welcome. San Mathias has lovely houses skirting the road from the chapel to the Church. The cross was taken over by our local Simon of Cyrene at the corner of the house of Jesico, who later became head of the village Council. By the time the cross shifted to a new shoulder amidst a lot of high decibel level instructions I was able to rest my feet and down several glasses of cool well-water. Wisely I also took off my shoes and, when no one was looking, flung them into the bushes behind the “balcao” where we were resting.
For the remaining part of the journey to Calvary I was carried by a retinue of aunts, grown up cousins and our ever faithful and indefatigable “mundkars” (tenants of our fields) who doubled as domestic help.
If for many years I have worn a kurta and pyjama and a pair of Kolapuri “slippers”, it has not been due to my swadeshi patriotism but due to my Goan shoe-pinching Christianity.