I Confess

Saturday evenings, invariably, found us children from different parts of my hometown, weave our way to church for catechism class, and then on to Confession, that is typical of the Catholic fraternity. We had a new parish priest, an elderly gentleman known to be particularly set in his ways. It wasn’t odd then that he found the banter and loud laughter of children pretty irksome. Father dear would be put off even by the scent of one’s hair oil if it failed to have the fragrance of coconut oil! That put us, little ones, on the perpetual red alert! Our dear parents, on their part, strove to help us understand Father’s peculiar ways, putting it down to the toll age can take on one. But we begged to differ. I guess any child would find it difficult to comprehend a priest being this way, however old.

On one such Saturday evening, while some of us were helping with cleaning the church, one group was outside getting ready for confession. The Confessional (which, over the years, came to be represented by the priest’s chair and the confessional screen) was shifted to the open ground around the church building. As is the practice, we would form neat queues, waiting for our turn to make a ‘good confession’, though I must hasten to add, it was a tad embarrassing too. The understanding of ‘humility’ came to me only much later. Naughty and nervous may appear to be oxymoronic in nature (or so I think), but for some remote reason best known to my Maker, I was blessed in abundance with both! 

Waiting, for what seemed like ages, for my turn at the confessional, I was happy that I was next! Happy, yes, that soon I’ll be free of my sins, but horrified too at the prospect of making the slightest goof-up that might incur a sharp reprimand from dear Father. On hindsight, I am positive that I was an ‘anticipator’ of all things negative. The terms ‘optimist’ and ‘pessimist’ weren’t even in my dictionary then! Anyway, back to that breezy, beautiful Saturday evening when I, having mustered every ounce of courage I could scrape up from within, found myself at the confessional, kneeling down and ready to rattle off my week’s wrong-doings. I also silently thanked God for the confessional screen, that I thought, had me ostensibly well cloaked in a feeling of anonymity.

Everything went well for a short while, and like I had decided, I literally raced through my sins at top speed. But as luck would have it, my confession also charmingly coincided with the deafening sound of the evening train that hurtled down the railway tracks nearby. The screen did nothing to hide dear Father’s skeptical scowl. Naturally he couldn’t hear a word of all that I blurted out in one breath, thanks to the heavy metallic sound of the pulsating steam powered train as it embraced the silvery iron tracks! It was too much for Father, unaccustomed to such high decibel sounds. Mine is what one would call, “a one-horse town”, or rather “a bullock-cart town”! Everything, from church to school to market to hospital to railway station, was but a stone’s throw away from one another.

If some faces are regarded as an open book, then Father’s was definitely one! With annoyance writ all over him, Father said, “the train is passing. So much noise. I can’t hear anything you say.” Now let me enlighten you: a giddy-goose does not need a plea to laugh! Off went I into peals of hysterical laughter, that like Stephen Leacock’s photographer in his short story, “With the Photographer”, my cackling caught Father’s “features just in a moment of animation.” I am sure the good Lord felt sad and bad for the both of us, for, after what seemed a never-ending bout of laughter to me, my silly laughter lulled itself into silence. And young as I was, I did understand that Father had waited patiently for me to get a hold of myself before saying in his staccato voice, “hmmm, the train has gone. Now start from the beginning.” 

I shall not humiliate myself any further by telling you that that was enough to get me started all over again. But truth be told, I spiralled into another laughing spree much like Jim Carrey in The Mask! “Now say” was Father’s cryptic response to the lull in my laughter. I am sure it was my guardian angel that held me in check this time round. I did make a proper confession like any good little girl, the only difference was, mine had to be at snail’s pace, on Father’s orders!