Serendipity

Ellen was not much of a religious person. She was a Psychology student and though she was not a Science fanatic or an Atheist, she had her own opinions about the concept of God. She did not believe in the Big Bang theory nor did she believe that Jesus was resurrected or that Lord Shiva had a third eye with which he could incinerate people.

So what she was essentially doing in that church on that Sunday morning was by no means a religious pursuit. She had a thesis to turn in soon for her degree and she really could not decide what it is going to be about. What better place to look for a subject for Psychology than in a place bustling with people?

A place of worship is a funny place, she thought to herself. Most of us here are here to repent for our sins of the past week, some for peace and some for the free food after the session. So which of these people are here for what, she wondered. She was seated near the end of the end of the Hall and given her unusual height of 178 centimeters; she was able to see nearly everybody. At least when she stood up she could. She could see that child pestering her mother to accompany her outside because she had to pee. There was a boy who was looking very uncomfortable in his church clothes. There was a couple who were bickering about God knows what. God knows what, she thought to herself. There were a group of teenagers visibly distracted by something. It’s a girl of course. There she was, pretty and innocent in her pink dress and completely unaware of the effect she was having on young minds a few aisles back. There was this guy who looked out of place in a church. Dressed shabbily, with four days growth of beard he was looking around scratching his head. Probably dandruff. The family next to him seemed to be more worried about his appearance than he was and the mother was asking her kids not to sit close to him. So where is he? The subject for my thesis?

 There he was.

As usual he was late. As usual he had a lit cigarette between his lips. As usual he was walking with a self- assured cockiness which only he was capable of.

Bobby.

She had been going out with him for more than a year now. What did she see in him?

Initially it has been the very same stuff which had attracted her to him. His courage. His bad-ass attitude. His swagger. The way he looked at her. The way he smiled when he was able to get an answer right before everybody else in class. The way he did not give a damn what anyone thinks and did what he wanted. And yes. The way he stepped in and knocked a guy out when he started harassing her. That singular act made me fall for him, she thought. He was not a bad person. He is anything but that. But his hot headedness is something she could not put up with all the time. He had a very short temper. So short that it could have been in Gulliver Travels. Last week Bobby broke her brother’s nose. For what? Because Eddie, her brother, told him that he was a punk and asked him to stay away from her.

Now she has to talk to him. Her parents want her to talk to him. He is going to blow a fuse.

Oh my God! Somebody ran into him without looking where he was going. This is not going to be good. Coffee on Bobby’s favourite shirt. It’s going to be a blood bath!

The other guy was yelling. They had just rammed into one another while everybody was going for the exit. This guy who was yelling, had been talking on his phone with a sandwich in his hand and he was clearly not aware that somebody was walking towards him and he just ran into this ‘other guy’. The ‘other guy’ now had vegetables and sauce on his shirt but he was calm and was just looking blankly at this ‘yeller’.

Yellers are crazy people. You can see them everywhere. They are basically people who are very insecure and are going through some rough times in personal life or career. They are these really hopeless people who are not able to tell their wives to get off their back or tell their bosses that they cannot work overtime daily because, honestly, they were not getting paid for the extra work. They can also be socially frustrated guys or guys who live out of their parents’ pension even when they are thirty. When these guys come out they have this huge balloon of feelings inside them ready to burst. They go about doing their work with that balloon perilously in danger blowing up any second. So when an opportunity presents itself in the form of a stand-off, like in the traffic or in Supermarket or wherever, even if the fault is their own they just start yelling. Like it’s the other persons fault. It somehow makes them feel better. Well, whatever works!

Anyway, as Ellen watched and thought about ‘yellers’ she recognized that this guy was one and usually the other guy in the stand-off also becomes involved emotionally. It may be another ‘yeller’ in which case you are in for a treat or it may be just a normal guy who gets pissed off when he is wrongly accused. In this case the this particular ‘yeller’ was asking for trouble because he had no business talking on a phone inside a church. Also he had not been watching where he was going.

Why was this other guy calm then? Interesting, she thought. She had never seen one situation act out this way before. There is always yelling from both sides. They yell till they get tired and then they leave. She thought that may be she would talk to this guy.

The yeller had by this time got tired and since he was not getting any back talk from the other guy he just threw some curses at him and left. Now that’s a good Christian. Cursing inside the church!

When she approached the ‘other guy’ she saw that he was much older then she assumed he was. He must have been sixty probably. That probably explains his calm demeanor. But she thought that even that was not enough reason to give a piece of your mind to a disrespectful young man.

“So you want to know why I did not tell him off, do you?”, he asked her, even before she could say anything.

“Well, yes actually. But before that I think we should get that shirt cleaned, sir. I think there must be a tap outside in the lawn. For the hose, you know”, she said.

He smiled.

“Call me Robert and that’s a good idea, young lady.”

“Call me Ellen, Robert”

“Ellen!”

Ellen could not get the scene out of her mind.

She kept playing it again and again in her mind. It HAD been a blood bath.

Bobby had taken a soft drink bottle which he found on the nearby table. He had asked the guy to apologize. He had asked nicely but for some reason the other guy did not want to do it. And he called Bobby a ‘ faggot’.

For Bobby that was like hanging a board around your neck saying ‘Hit me’.

So Bobby did just that. He hit the guy with the bottle so hard that Ellen was sure he had killed him.

There was blood everywhere. The guy’s head had started bleeding profusely immediately after contact and he had gone into shock and had started twitching.

Bobby’s shirt looked like a modern painting with Coffee stains and blood.

The guy was alive and he kept mumbling “Grass hopper.. grass hopper ..” all the way to the dispensary.

Bobby was wearing a green shirt and he was very lean. With his sticky hands and legs he did resemble a grass hopper.

 They both looked at the grass hopper.

“Sometimes I wish we were able to camouflage into the surroundings like a grass hopper”, Ellen said.

“We all have our purpose in life. We have been made for that. We have been made with unique attributes fort that higher purpose. The grass hopper does not know why it is green. It has adapted itself to do certain things. Like hide in grass. It knows it is safe but not why. But we should be able to realize for what purpose we are here. And why we are what we are.”, Robert said.

They had cleaned the shirt and had decided to sit in the lawn for some time till it dries out.thats when the grass hopper caught Ellen’s eyes.

“A philosopher , are we?”

“No, not a philosopher but a person who is seeking the truth about us. There was a time when I was hot headed like so many others in the world but it did not bring me anything but misery. There was a time when I thought there was no God and that nature was the only real law. But now I have broadened my horizons.”

“ Wow! God uh? Funny that you should talk about him. I have often debated it myself too. Answer this. Each day as we go we seem to find new ways to understand things around us. New laws. New equations. New theories. Everything seems to suggest though we are in no way close to complete understanding, we are making progress. So soon we might be able to explain everything through science or mathematics for that matter. So where does God figure in this equation, no pun intended?”

“Very thoughtful for a young girl. You actually remind me of someone I knew. Let me put it this way. Assuming that God did create this Universe let me make an analogy. Human beings create so many things. Say robots, ,machines, whatever. But even for something created from understanding of science and laws of what not we are never able to say how a certain machine will work. A machine made from the same parts , obeying the same theories may not work out to be behave the same way. So how then do we explain the fact that Gravity is the same everywhere? Or the Fibonacci series in sunflowers ? It is the same eevrywhere. So all these has been created by something much more advanced than we ever can be. What I am trying to say is if there is a God and you think you are able to understand stuff with mathematics it can only mean that mathematics is meant to be the language through which we can understand It. God speaks to us through mathematics. That is if you assume that there is a God.”

 “Hmmm. That’s one way to look at it. So tell me why did you remain calm inside there?”

“That’s nothing actually. Before I explain that let me tell you this. I have not been here for twenty years now. I used to live here. This church actually played a very important role in my life. It is responsible for what I am today. When I decided to change my ways I did not know where to start. The first thing I did was start reading on various religions to understand the concept of God. You can say there is no God all you want. That’s easy to do. But an open minded person would also want to look at the evidence that is there in God’s favour. I wanted to be that person. I travelled the world in search of something I lost. But I came away with something else. My travels helped me to read people. I can look at people and can just register what they are going through. Happiness, sadness, shock,puzzlement. That is one of the reasons why I come to church. So today when that guy started yelling I could see that his anger was misdirected. I was sure he was another poor soul who was having a bad day. I did not want to make it any worse than it already was. So I just meditated on the moment. Zen philosophy says that you can clear negative energy with positive energy. I think I did that today. I could see his anger subside. In the end he looked defeated. Ahimsa”

“You know something. You and I are not very different. I come here to observe people too. So tell me what is this truth?”

“You have a whole life ahead of you. You will figure it out.”

“Anyway. Have you got plans for lunch. No? Good. Then I want to have you over for lunch. My place his just couple of blocks away.”

“Ok. I have learned that in my experience free food tastes better no matter how bad it is.”

“Don’t worry my grandma is a great cook. So you are really not going to tell me the ‘Truth of Human Existence’?”

“Tell me the truth, Bobby”

“What do you want to know, El?”

“You know what I am talking about. I well forget that you broke my brother’s nose. I will forget what happened just now. Just tell me what I want to know? Were you or were you not involved in the fire that happened at the church on Friday.”

“El..”

“Answer me honestly, Bobby. Please tell me the truth.’

“Yes.”

“Why, Bobby, why would you want to do that? Not believing is one thing but, really? Arson? That too in a church?”

“It is not a church. It is an Evangelist paradise. On Friday they had this fancy evangelist fly out from somewhere and he was conning the poor out of their money promising them miracles. That guy was actually saying children infected by AIDS are Satan’s children and they deserve to perish in hell. We went there to threaten them. To expose the fraud that they are. But this guy was too much. He has a private jet. A 747. All from swindling the poor and the rich alike. He said he could cure epilepsy. There is no cure for epilepsy! He said that people with epilepsy are possessed by the Devil and he would exorcise them. And that after five exorcisings the epileptic would be cured. He said exorcising would cost thousand bucks because he had to import some special holy water from the birthplace of Jesus and some crap like that. We could not take it anymore and so we had to throw a Molotov at him. God or no God it was preposterous. Be thankful that he is alive.”

“ What if somebody else was hurt?”

“What do you think I am? Stupid? We had only enough gasoline in that to frighten the crap out of him. Nobody was going to get hurt. But then he was wearing this frock which caught fire and that f****r removed it and threw it at the curtains and ran out. The curtains caught fire and soon everything was on fire. The police should arrest him. That’s what they should do.”

“Bobby, you are not making it easy for us or for me. You know that my parents are devout Christians. How do you think they will accept you? They are going to hear about this soon. They have already started discussing my marriage with another family that they know from church;their boy is doing law at Harvard. His name is Timothy Downey. I think you have blew it this time.”

“ Are you telling me we are through?Answer me. Answer me, El. God Damn it, answer me.”

“Yes, grandma. That’s what I said. We have a visitor for lunch. Come down and keep him company while I go dressed.”

“ What did you say? I can’t hear you”

“I said come down”

“Ok,I will turn the volume down.”

Ellen sighed and went into her room to get changed. Robert started looking around the living room. There were photographs of Ellen everywhere. They must have taken a lot of photos. There was Ellen when she was four or five holding a fish which her father had caught presumably. There were photos of her during dress rehearsals. There was her getting some medal in college. And then there were some black and white photos. Of a young man. Must have been Ellen’s Father, thought Robert. And there was one of him with his degree at Harvard. Robert Downey. Robert uh? What a coincidence, he pondered.

Ellen returned from her room.

“You are looking at the photos uh?”

“Yeah, actually I was just wondering how weird it was that your father’s name was Robert too.”

“Oh! Actually I forget his name was Robert sometimes. Everybody calls him Bobby. My grandma used to call him that and it stuck.”

“Oh! Your grandma, is it? Her name would not happen to be Ellen would it, like yours?”

“Actually, yes. How did you guess?”

“Let’s just say I acquired psychic powers when I learned the truth about human existence”, he said looking at the mantel where he saw a very old photo of a girl in her twenties who he assumed was her Grandmother and who he knew to be Ellen.