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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Teens
- Theme: Inspirational
- Subject: Inspirational / Uplifting
- Published: 09/23/2013
Cactus God
Born 1985, F, from Muscat, OmanThe one thing that bound us to each other was our Cactus god. Well, he wasn’t exactly a cactus. He was a variant of a succulent called yucca. But at the time, we didn’t know it. What reminds me of our god is his old devolving photograph, which I found in Jane’s treasure drawer.
At first, I was surprised to find it amid all the feminine scrap, the drawer was filled with. But then, my sister, Jane, did have a flair for fairies and fantasies and often was heard speaking to her numerous imaginary friends, within the confines of the bathroom. I realize that under the very sober expression of a software engineer, she is very much the dreamy little girl she used to be.
Unlike her, I could never become friends with spiders and moths; nevertheless, I was a fantastic dreamer, myself. And that brings us back to our Cactus god.
Jane and I were born and brought up in a sleepy little village called Qarat, in Oman. As with almost every village of the world, Qarat has its own stories to tell. There are colossal ruins of ancient forts and cannons which are partially buried in the sand. There are the wadis which dangerously fill up with water during the rains, which is a rare sight. There are goats that graze on everything. And everything includes grass, leaves, paper, trash, plastic, everything.
Of all the fascinating things in Qarat, we loved the haunted house, several yards behind our house. But this story is about our Cactus god and not a ghost-infested house, so let me begin with where it all began.
It was the last day of the first week of July 1996. I failed in the first assessment at school, I lost the badminton match to the ruffian, Antony Pereira and I was made to kneel down in front of the whole class because I hadn’t finished an imposition that I’d got the previous day. After a terrible day at school, I packed up my schoolbag and was impatient to get home.
One mishap was followed by the next. Being home didn’t change anything. After one hour of lecture on discipline and hard work, Mummy and Daddy finally allowed me to withdraw into my bedroom.
Jane, who had hitherto been a silent spectator, to my surprise, spoke my mind,
“There should be an end to all this!”
“I don’t think that’s ever going to happen.” I sighed.
She pursed her lips and mused. And then, very reluctantly, she said, “It will. Very soon.”
I had hoped for a wonderful Wednesday evening, but here I was, surrounded by stacks of papers, waiting to be filled in with words I hardly cared about. I wrote my homework into the night, until Mummy called me for dinner.
Sleep is a necessary evil. Jane couldn’t fully agree with my observations, yet she had to agree that sometimes sleep made her unhappy. It was like a delicious feast thrown right at you only to be annulled, before you could even reach the main course. It would have been just fine if there wasn’t a feast in the first place.
Jane and I tried our best to delay sleep during the weekends, for those were the only days when we could wake up after 7. My sister and I shared the bedroom and in those days, neither of us found it inconvenient.
“Jonah, do you know why we are punished so severely?” Jane asked me from her bed which was beside mine.
I was puzzled. “No.”
“Haven’t you ever wanted to be free from the homework and punishments we get from everywhere?”
“Yeah! Absolutely! I don’t think I’ll live to grow up to be an adult if I am to write two thousand pages about plants, animals or numbers per day.”
Jane sat up on her bed and declared, “Then we must find out a way to stop all our worries. We must find somebody who can actually help us. Someone who can turn our sorrow into joy, our mischance into fortune”
“Hmm. It sounds good to me but where are we going to find someone who turns bad luck into good luck?”
“I don’t know,” replied Jane, “But we will find him very soon.”
The weekends in Oman consist of Thursdays and Fridays. So, these were the days of joy, peace and celebrations. Some of our friends paid short visits to their cousins in Dubai, while others travelled all the way to Muscat, the capital of Oman. The first weekend of July in 1996 was no different except for me and my sister.
By the time I woke up Jane was already at my bedside. She dragged me out of the bed and whispered into my ears, “I have found him!”
It is needless to say that I didn’t understand what she told me but she wasn’t annoyed.
“Get ready! Be quick!” she commanded, trembling with excitement.
A few minutes later, Jane took me outside our house. All the four walls of our compound were covered with bougainvillaea. Daddy had a little garden of his own where he grew almost every vegetable on the planet. One would be astonished to see such growth in a desert. Desert soil is indeed very fertile. So, there are some interesting facts in my textbook. But Jane pulled me towards the farthest corner of our compound wall.
There, at the corner, sat a huge green plant with pointy, needle-like things on the tip of each of its leaf-like structures.
“There he is!”
“Er…what is it?” I asked.
“He is our new god!” Jane gleamed and looked quite pleased. “He is a cactus. Look at his thorns. Those are his weapons.” She pointed at the needle-like things.
She continued, “They are very sharp. So, be good and keep a distance when you appear in front of our god. Don’t make him angry.”
I wasn’t quite convinced.
“Are you sure that he can help us?” I asked her.
“Yes!” she exclaimed and paused to think. At last she suggested that we test him. Jane brought a glass of water and picked a few pebbles. She dropped the pebbles on the ground and poured the water on the leaves of the cactus. Then she closed her eyes and prayed aloud, “God, I request you to remove all the pain and punishments that we are subjected to at school. Please allow us not to be punished ever again.”
After that we waited for a few minutes. Nothing happened. No smoke, nor thunder, nor a lightning. Finally, Jane said,
“Maybe we should wait till Saturday.”
While the two of us wrote our homework, we kept visiting our god at regular intervals. Jane poured water every time she visited him. I wondered what other things would please him and nag him into granting our wishes. We could hardly conceal our impatience. Not once did it occur to us that for the first time in our lives we were eager to go to school. Daddy and Mummy seemed amused by our newfound interest in studies. They even let us play the video games which were temporarily banned on account of my failing in the test.
After the unusually long wait, Saturday arrived. Jane and I eyed each other during breakfast and then ran out at the first sound of the engine outside.
The first three periods went quite smoothly. I was careful enough to control myself as the hooligan, Antony bragged about his latest conquest. Mrs. Teresa, my math teacher, was sent for by the principal so she left Antony in charge of the class. I kept my eyes glued to my paper and tried to focus on the math problem before me.
Antony clapped his hands and cleared his throat. Everyone looked at him with anticipation.
“My friends, look who we have here,” he said, pointing his finger at me. “Prophet Jonah is trying to figure out his relationship with fish!”
A few girls giggled and others smiled expecting more.
“Do you know why? Because the last time he played badminton, he ended up smelling like one.”
And the whole class burst into laughter. I felt goose pimples all over my body as I turned red. Yet, I was waiting for my god to act. Soon, he would appear with his weapons and shoot all the needle-like structures into Antony’s fleshy bum. But nothing happened.
“Listen prophet!” he continued. “If I see you anywhere near the court, I’m gonna make sure that your ugly sister carries your broken bones home.”
This was too much. Antony had crossed the limit. I forgot everything about the god and planted a heavy foot on his tummy. Antony fell backward and stumbled among the chairs. He rolled his eyes more out of surprise than of anger.
He jumped to his feet, clenched his fists and attacked me. I got severe blows on my back and my tummy when somebody pulled him by the collar, away from me.
Oh God! I thought. Not again. This can’t be happening. I was dejected realising that the whole new god and prayer affair was turning into such a big waste of time.
Mr. Mathew, our principal, glared at both of us. He wanted to know what had happened. None of our classmates opened their mouths.
“None of you are going home without telling me what exactly happened here.”
Silence.
Mr. Mathew grimaced with irritation.
“Fine. I want all of your parents in my office, today!” He declared.
Everybody looked at everybody else. Nobody spoke.
At last a feeble voice broke the silence. It was Annie, Mrs. Teresa’s daughter.
“He started it,” she said, pointing at Antony.
“What did he do?” the principal questioned her quickly.
Annie said that Antony bragged about the match and then insulted me. And since I remained calm, he tried to provoke me by beating me up.
Well, that was partly a lie but I felt a gush of gratitude towards Annie. Nobody spoke in support of the class bully. But the verdict hadn’t still been pronounced. I felt something warm flow down through the corners of my lips. It was blood. I wiped it with my hand when Mrs. Teresa noticed it.
“He’s bleeding!” she told the principal.
Mr. Mathew turned to me with concern.
“Take him to the nurse’s room. Tell his parents that there’s nothing to worry.”
Then he turned to Antony.
“As to you, young man…you may come with me.”
Saying so, he pulled Antony by the forearm outside the classroom.
It was a miracle! The impossible had happened! I was not only shown extreme kindness but was advised rest for a day. It was a dream come true!
At home, Mummy was furious, but not at me.
“Boys like Antony should be taken seriously. If he could assault somebody at this degree, he would grow up to be a criminal!” she said.
In our bedroom, Jane giggled enthusiastically.
“See! I told you! I told you that he’ll take care of everything!” she said.
“Yes! I can’t believe that he did it. It’s so good to be true.”
“He is god. He can do anything!”
“Well, what did he do for you? How did your day go?” I inquired.
“Never better! You remember that essay I had to write and couldn’t finish?”
“Yes. The ‘Where you see yourself in the next twenty years’ one?”
“Yes! You see, I couldn’t complete it yesterday and I was tensed up. I was sure that Mr. Ben was going to throw me out. But he didn’t! He didn’t ask me anything. He must have forgotten it. I’ve no idea. But the thing is he didn’t!”
“Oh great!” I replied.
“Oh, the best is yet to come! He selected me as leader of the Drama club!”
“Congratulations! That’s wonderful. You’ve always wanted it!”
“Yes! I know!” she cried. We burst into laughter, officially celebrating our day of victory.
“We must give him a name,” she said.
“What name?”
“I don’t know. Something like Celticotle or Janenohadle”
“Those sound difficult.”
Jane frowned, thinking very hard.
“I know!” she exclaimed. “He is a cactus. We’ll just call him Cactus god.”
Having given our god an appropriate name, we chatted for some more time. And as we did, our trust in our Cactus god grew strong.
It seemed like our god was pouring all his blessings upon us, just like the real living God who poured out His love to Adam and Eve. My sister and I spent almost all of our free time watering him and trying other ways to please him. And pleased he was for we started showing better results in our academics and teachers started showing more interest in us. One of my teachers even congratulated me on my self- control after the Antony incident.
Daddy obviously got a good report from the teachers because now he no longer held lengthy lectures with me and Mummy came home with our favourite cotton candies, which she had prohibited two years ago. Days passed blissfully for the two of us.
One of those days, Daddy and Moses, a tiny man who helped Daddy with his gardening decided to clean up the place. They spent the whole morning cutting out branches, pulling out weeds and burning them up. When Jane and I came home from school, we were outraged. Daddy clasped one end of a rope which was around our Cactus god. Moses pulled the other end with his right hand and held a cigarette in the other. The two of them were tugging on it trying to uproot our god.
We screamed at the top of our lungs, rushed towards them and positioned ourselves between the two strong men and our floral deity.
“What are you two doing?” Daddy asked, quite taken aback.
“Daddy, please leave him alone. Don’t take him away!” we screamed.
We thought that Daddy would get angry and scold us but he didn’t. Instead, he laughed and let the rope go. He waved his palms in the air and said,
“Okay! Okay! I’m letting him go.”
Only after we were thoroughly convinced that they wouldn’t pull him out behind our backs, did we return to our room. Daddy was obviously confused by the commotion we had showcased.
Jane and I had promised each other that both of us would keep mum on the subject and wouldn’t tell anybody of our very own private god. He was exclusively for us. But, the age of 10 years was too young to hold a secret of such importance that the word fell out of my mouth. I told Ryan, my best pal. Ryan was an Anglo-Indian boy who lived in the neighbourhood. We went to different schools but were very good friends.
Now, Ryan was charmed by the stories that I told him about our god who saved us from all the woes. He expressed his wish to see him. I was troubled. I had promised Jane that I wouldn’t breathe a word about him to anybody. She is going to be mad at me. I thought. Yet, Ryan continued to compel me and I had to finally give in.
I was right. Jane was mad. She was so enraged that she even called me a traitor. She said that I deserved to be thrown out and that I had defiled the sanctity of our god. I was terrified. I begged her not to throw me away. After several hours of pleading and reasoning, Jane suggested that we bring Ryan before the Cactus god and apologize.
The next evening, I brought Ryan home and presented him before our god. Jane trembled and poured the daily glass of water and asked for forgiveness. Ryan and I bowed down before him.
After the water-pouring ceremony, Jane set the glass aside and sighed.
“I hope he forgives,” She said.
The next day was Wednesday. I’d been looking forward for this day for I would be facing Antony again for another badminton match. Do I have to specify who won? I don’t think so because I was destined to win. Antony kicked and screamed out of the court. I bought Annie a can of Mountain Dew from the canteen, as a gesture of gratitude that was due.
He has forgiven. I thought. Ryan and I had a great day.
“Don’t we have to repay him for all that he has given us?” asked Ryan.
His words struck us equally for it had never occurred in our minds that he would want something in return. He was the provider. Did he ever want anything back?
“What about a sacrifice?” suggested Ryan.
“What kind of a sacrifice?” asked Jane.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “In some religions they sacrifice humans to please their gods.”
“Geez! That’s heartless!” she cried out. And I almost choked with my saliva.
“We don’t have to sacrifice a human. What about birds or animals? A stray cat for instance.”
“That’s cruel. Our god doesn’t like hurting anything that breathes,” replied Jane.
“Well, then, why don’t you think of something?”
“I know,” I cut in. “Why don’t we just sacrifice dry leaves? Dry leaves don’t breathe and my textbook says that decayed leaves nourish the soil. After all, our god is a plant.”
“The plant,” corrected my sister, rolling her eyes at me as if I said something disrespectful.
“Alright. Let’s give these leaves in sacrifice to our god.”
Having said so, Jane picked up a handful of leaves and held them high above her head like a priestess.
Daddy and Mummy usually spent Wednesday evenings chatting and playing badminton with our neighbours, right outside our gate. It had become a habit with all the parents in the surroundings. And when Daddy and Mummy indulged in these light social activities, they usually left us in charge of Moses.
In order to preserve our secret, we decided to hold our sacrifice when nobody was around. Moses was chewing on his cigarette and watering the plants on the other end of the garden, which was awfully convenient. Jane, Ryan and I gathered decaying leaves and placed them in front of the Cactus god. After a heap of a respectable size was made, Jane announced that it was time to light the fire.
None of us had a matchbox or a lighter. Ryan insisted that we make fire out of stone like cave men. Obviously, Jane was not pleased with the idea. Yet the three devotees sat down with stones in their hands, rubbing them together until sores materialized. At last Jane got up to execute plan B.
We followed her into the kitchen, where she switched on the stove, rolled a piece of newspaper and placed it above the blue flame. The paper caught fire very quickly and burnt out in a jiffy. Jane rolled up another paper and this time it burnt so slowly that we got time to reach our entity. But again the paper created a tiny cloud of smoke and burnt away leaving the dry leaves untouched.
“Maybe we should pour some oil on the leaves,” advised Ryan.
“I’ll get the kerosene!” I offered and ran indoors. It didn’t take me much time to find the can of kerosene that Daddy had kept inside the kitchen shelf, along with his other tools. I took it and poured lavishly on the dry leaves and then ran to accompany Jane and Ryan as they tried to get the fire. After ten minutes of perseverance and hard work, we managed to maintain a little flame. We sped towards our god.
Our hopes and desires to please our idol of devotion all came to an abrupt end when we saw blazing fire all over the garden. All the plants that covered the ground and the walls saltated madly while a choking smoke filled the air. Ryan screamed and raced out of the garden while my sister and I stood rooted to the spot, devoid of any sort of emotion and watched our Cactus god succumb to the fire and burst into flames of yellow and orange.
How long we sat on the verandah, covered in a blanket, with Mummy’s arms around us, we hardly knew. All the fruits of Daddy’s toil lay charred on the ground. It was morning and we could hear Mummy’s voice, repeatedly whispering, “It’s alright. We’re safe.”
By the time the sun came up, the place was cleaned up and I heard Daddy telling a friend that the fire had not touched the house or any of the electric cables and that it didn’t take the men much time to put out the fire.
I don’t remember much of what had happened that day. Jane and I were too shocked to speak a word. And nobody asked us anything. We were brought home from the hospital after treating minor burns. In the afternoon, Jane and I sat down at the veranda and looked for the remains of our deceased plant god. There were none. We couldn’t make out what went wrong. Perhaps, one of the semi-burnt papers caused the fire. But one thing was sure. Our god was displeased with us.
“He didn’t accept Ryan,” said Jane. “He was angry and he has left us.”
The fact just wouldn’t sink in. I couldn’t believe that our god had left us for good. He had forsaken us. Jane put her arm around my shoulder and tilted her head to touch mine.
Dad probably noticed us, for I saw him approach us. He sat down between us and covered us with his arms. And the three of us sat there in silence.
“I know how you loved your prickly friend. And I’m so, so sorry.”
Daddy comforted us. He spoke very slowly, stopping to choose the apt words.
“You know, sometimes you must learn to say good bye to your loved ones, however hard it may seem. But we must because it is inevitable.”
“I know Daddy, but we’ll miss him. He was our god,” said Jane.
“God?”
“Yes, our Cactus god.”
Jane and I explained all good things that Cactus god had done for us and how all our worries and woes were turned into joy and victory. Tears ran down our eyes, as we told him that everything has disappeared along with him. It was our fault. We were going to be our old insignificant selves again. We were going to be the losers that we were in the first place.
Daddy squeezed our fragile shoulders with his mighty arms and waited till both of us stopped crying. And then he said,
“Jane, Jonah… Just because your plant friend left you it doesn’t mean that you are going to lose everything. You are NOT losers.”
He continued, “You are not insignificant. You never were. You…both of you are brilliant! And even if you lost a few matches or failed a few tests, you will still be brilliant. The number of praises that you get from a few people does not decide who you are. You are what you are. You are what you turn yourself into. And you can be brilliant the way you are. All you need to do is work hard and have faith in yourself. And all the humiliation that you suffered will be forgotten. You will be like the silver that our true God purifies. You know it, don’t you? Ah! Of course, you don’t know it!”
Before we retired into our room, we heard Mummy asking Daddy, “How are they?”
“They are fine. Very brave.”
“Poor kids.”
“Those tender hearts hunger for the spiritual food. I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself if I let it burn out.”
I heard him sigh. After a moment he said. “We’ve really got to pack them to Sunday school. They deserve to receive their share. ”
As I sit in with a pile of girlish posters, postcards and magazines strewn before me and a picture of a huge succulent in my hand, somebody puts an arm around my shoulder and whispers,
“Has my little brother been spying on me?”
Jane smiles at me and then looks at the photograph in my hand.
“Do you still keep this? I found it in your chest of drawers.”
“So you were spying on me.”
I shrug.
Jane takes the decaying photograph from my hand and stares at it, and then says,
“I miss him.”
“So do I, sometimes.”
Neither of us speaks for a while. And then she says, “All I can say is, Rest in peace!”
We laugh. Mummy interrupts us. “Look who we have here.”
Jane and I go downstairs to find Moses, our old, tiny gardener. He has come to invite us for his daughter’s wedding.
“This is great Moses, Congratulations!” I say.
Moses bows his head with unnecessary humility and drops his cigarette pack. He picks it up and Daddy teases him.
“You have changed not a bit. Haven’t you learnt from your experience, Moses? A cigarette kills in ways that you least expect.”
Jane and I look puzzled.
“Take for instance, the fire of ’96.”
Saying so, Mummy and Daddy laugh while Moses lowers his face in shame.
My jaw drops open and I turn to find Jane in the similar condition. We return to Jane’s room in silence. After a while Jane says,
“You know, it’s such a good thing that they’d sent us to the Sunday school.”
Cactus God(Celia Philips)
The one thing that bound us to each other was our Cactus god. Well, he wasn’t exactly a cactus. He was a variant of a succulent called yucca. But at the time, we didn’t know it. What reminds me of our god is his old devolving photograph, which I found in Jane’s treasure drawer.
At first, I was surprised to find it amid all the feminine scrap, the drawer was filled with. But then, my sister, Jane, did have a flair for fairies and fantasies and often was heard speaking to her numerous imaginary friends, within the confines of the bathroom. I realize that under the very sober expression of a software engineer, she is very much the dreamy little girl she used to be.
Unlike her, I could never become friends with spiders and moths; nevertheless, I was a fantastic dreamer, myself. And that brings us back to our Cactus god.
Jane and I were born and brought up in a sleepy little village called Qarat, in Oman. As with almost every village of the world, Qarat has its own stories to tell. There are colossal ruins of ancient forts and cannons which are partially buried in the sand. There are the wadis which dangerously fill up with water during the rains, which is a rare sight. There are goats that graze on everything. And everything includes grass, leaves, paper, trash, plastic, everything.
Of all the fascinating things in Qarat, we loved the haunted house, several yards behind our house. But this story is about our Cactus god and not a ghost-infested house, so let me begin with where it all began.
It was the last day of the first week of July 1996. I failed in the first assessment at school, I lost the badminton match to the ruffian, Antony Pereira and I was made to kneel down in front of the whole class because I hadn’t finished an imposition that I’d got the previous day. After a terrible day at school, I packed up my schoolbag and was impatient to get home.
One mishap was followed by the next. Being home didn’t change anything. After one hour of lecture on discipline and hard work, Mummy and Daddy finally allowed me to withdraw into my bedroom.
Jane, who had hitherto been a silent spectator, to my surprise, spoke my mind,
“There should be an end to all this!”
“I don’t think that’s ever going to happen.” I sighed.
She pursed her lips and mused. And then, very reluctantly, she said, “It will. Very soon.”
I had hoped for a wonderful Wednesday evening, but here I was, surrounded by stacks of papers, waiting to be filled in with words I hardly cared about. I wrote my homework into the night, until Mummy called me for dinner.
Sleep is a necessary evil. Jane couldn’t fully agree with my observations, yet she had to agree that sometimes sleep made her unhappy. It was like a delicious feast thrown right at you only to be annulled, before you could even reach the main course. It would have been just fine if there wasn’t a feast in the first place.
Jane and I tried our best to delay sleep during the weekends, for those were the only days when we could wake up after 7. My sister and I shared the bedroom and in those days, neither of us found it inconvenient.
“Jonah, do you know why we are punished so severely?” Jane asked me from her bed which was beside mine.
I was puzzled. “No.”
“Haven’t you ever wanted to be free from the homework and punishments we get from everywhere?”
“Yeah! Absolutely! I don’t think I’ll live to grow up to be an adult if I am to write two thousand pages about plants, animals or numbers per day.”
Jane sat up on her bed and declared, “Then we must find out a way to stop all our worries. We must find somebody who can actually help us. Someone who can turn our sorrow into joy, our mischance into fortune”
“Hmm. It sounds good to me but where are we going to find someone who turns bad luck into good luck?”
“I don’t know,” replied Jane, “But we will find him very soon.”
The weekends in Oman consist of Thursdays and Fridays. So, these were the days of joy, peace and celebrations. Some of our friends paid short visits to their cousins in Dubai, while others travelled all the way to Muscat, the capital of Oman. The first weekend of July in 1996 was no different except for me and my sister.
By the time I woke up Jane was already at my bedside. She dragged me out of the bed and whispered into my ears, “I have found him!”
It is needless to say that I didn’t understand what she told me but she wasn’t annoyed.
“Get ready! Be quick!” she commanded, trembling with excitement.
A few minutes later, Jane took me outside our house. All the four walls of our compound were covered with bougainvillaea. Daddy had a little garden of his own where he grew almost every vegetable on the planet. One would be astonished to see such growth in a desert. Desert soil is indeed very fertile. So, there are some interesting facts in my textbook. But Jane pulled me towards the farthest corner of our compound wall.
There, at the corner, sat a huge green plant with pointy, needle-like things on the tip of each of its leaf-like structures.
“There he is!”
“Er…what is it?” I asked.
“He is our new god!” Jane gleamed and looked quite pleased. “He is a cactus. Look at his thorns. Those are his weapons.” She pointed at the needle-like things.
She continued, “They are very sharp. So, be good and keep a distance when you appear in front of our god. Don’t make him angry.”
I wasn’t quite convinced.
“Are you sure that he can help us?” I asked her.
“Yes!” she exclaimed and paused to think. At last she suggested that we test him. Jane brought a glass of water and picked a few pebbles. She dropped the pebbles on the ground and poured the water on the leaves of the cactus. Then she closed her eyes and prayed aloud, “God, I request you to remove all the pain and punishments that we are subjected to at school. Please allow us not to be punished ever again.”
After that we waited for a few minutes. Nothing happened. No smoke, nor thunder, nor a lightning. Finally, Jane said,
“Maybe we should wait till Saturday.”
While the two of us wrote our homework, we kept visiting our god at regular intervals. Jane poured water every time she visited him. I wondered what other things would please him and nag him into granting our wishes. We could hardly conceal our impatience. Not once did it occur to us that for the first time in our lives we were eager to go to school. Daddy and Mummy seemed amused by our newfound interest in studies. They even let us play the video games which were temporarily banned on account of my failing in the test.
After the unusually long wait, Saturday arrived. Jane and I eyed each other during breakfast and then ran out at the first sound of the engine outside.
The first three periods went quite smoothly. I was careful enough to control myself as the hooligan, Antony bragged about his latest conquest. Mrs. Teresa, my math teacher, was sent for by the principal so she left Antony in charge of the class. I kept my eyes glued to my paper and tried to focus on the math problem before me.
Antony clapped his hands and cleared his throat. Everyone looked at him with anticipation.
“My friends, look who we have here,” he said, pointing his finger at me. “Prophet Jonah is trying to figure out his relationship with fish!”
A few girls giggled and others smiled expecting more.
“Do you know why? Because the last time he played badminton, he ended up smelling like one.”
And the whole class burst into laughter. I felt goose pimples all over my body as I turned red. Yet, I was waiting for my god to act. Soon, he would appear with his weapons and shoot all the needle-like structures into Antony’s fleshy bum. But nothing happened.
“Listen prophet!” he continued. “If I see you anywhere near the court, I’m gonna make sure that your ugly sister carries your broken bones home.”
This was too much. Antony had crossed the limit. I forgot everything about the god and planted a heavy foot on his tummy. Antony fell backward and stumbled among the chairs. He rolled his eyes more out of surprise than of anger.
He jumped to his feet, clenched his fists and attacked me. I got severe blows on my back and my tummy when somebody pulled him by the collar, away from me.
Oh God! I thought. Not again. This can’t be happening. I was dejected realising that the whole new god and prayer affair was turning into such a big waste of time.
Mr. Mathew, our principal, glared at both of us. He wanted to know what had happened. None of our classmates opened their mouths.
“None of you are going home without telling me what exactly happened here.”
Silence.
Mr. Mathew grimaced with irritation.
“Fine. I want all of your parents in my office, today!” He declared.
Everybody looked at everybody else. Nobody spoke.
At last a feeble voice broke the silence. It was Annie, Mrs. Teresa’s daughter.
“He started it,” she said, pointing at Antony.
“What did he do?” the principal questioned her quickly.
Annie said that Antony bragged about the match and then insulted me. And since I remained calm, he tried to provoke me by beating me up.
Well, that was partly a lie but I felt a gush of gratitude towards Annie. Nobody spoke in support of the class bully. But the verdict hadn’t still been pronounced. I felt something warm flow down through the corners of my lips. It was blood. I wiped it with my hand when Mrs. Teresa noticed it.
“He’s bleeding!” she told the principal.
Mr. Mathew turned to me with concern.
“Take him to the nurse’s room. Tell his parents that there’s nothing to worry.”
Then he turned to Antony.
“As to you, young man…you may come with me.”
Saying so, he pulled Antony by the forearm outside the classroom.
It was a miracle! The impossible had happened! I was not only shown extreme kindness but was advised rest for a day. It was a dream come true!
At home, Mummy was furious, but not at me.
“Boys like Antony should be taken seriously. If he could assault somebody at this degree, he would grow up to be a criminal!” she said.
In our bedroom, Jane giggled enthusiastically.
“See! I told you! I told you that he’ll take care of everything!” she said.
“Yes! I can’t believe that he did it. It’s so good to be true.”
“He is god. He can do anything!”
“Well, what did he do for you? How did your day go?” I inquired.
“Never better! You remember that essay I had to write and couldn’t finish?”
“Yes. The ‘Where you see yourself in the next twenty years’ one?”
“Yes! You see, I couldn’t complete it yesterday and I was tensed up. I was sure that Mr. Ben was going to throw me out. But he didn’t! He didn’t ask me anything. He must have forgotten it. I’ve no idea. But the thing is he didn’t!”
“Oh great!” I replied.
“Oh, the best is yet to come! He selected me as leader of the Drama club!”
“Congratulations! That’s wonderful. You’ve always wanted it!”
“Yes! I know!” she cried. We burst into laughter, officially celebrating our day of victory.
“We must give him a name,” she said.
“What name?”
“I don’t know. Something like Celticotle or Janenohadle”
“Those sound difficult.”
Jane frowned, thinking very hard.
“I know!” she exclaimed. “He is a cactus. We’ll just call him Cactus god.”
Having given our god an appropriate name, we chatted for some more time. And as we did, our trust in our Cactus god grew strong.
It seemed like our god was pouring all his blessings upon us, just like the real living God who poured out His love to Adam and Eve. My sister and I spent almost all of our free time watering him and trying other ways to please him. And pleased he was for we started showing better results in our academics and teachers started showing more interest in us. One of my teachers even congratulated me on my self- control after the Antony incident.
Daddy obviously got a good report from the teachers because now he no longer held lengthy lectures with me and Mummy came home with our favourite cotton candies, which she had prohibited two years ago. Days passed blissfully for the two of us.
One of those days, Daddy and Moses, a tiny man who helped Daddy with his gardening decided to clean up the place. They spent the whole morning cutting out branches, pulling out weeds and burning them up. When Jane and I came home from school, we were outraged. Daddy clasped one end of a rope which was around our Cactus god. Moses pulled the other end with his right hand and held a cigarette in the other. The two of them were tugging on it trying to uproot our god.
We screamed at the top of our lungs, rushed towards them and positioned ourselves between the two strong men and our floral deity.
“What are you two doing?” Daddy asked, quite taken aback.
“Daddy, please leave him alone. Don’t take him away!” we screamed.
We thought that Daddy would get angry and scold us but he didn’t. Instead, he laughed and let the rope go. He waved his palms in the air and said,
“Okay! Okay! I’m letting him go.”
Only after we were thoroughly convinced that they wouldn’t pull him out behind our backs, did we return to our room. Daddy was obviously confused by the commotion we had showcased.
Jane and I had promised each other that both of us would keep mum on the subject and wouldn’t tell anybody of our very own private god. He was exclusively for us. But, the age of 10 years was too young to hold a secret of such importance that the word fell out of my mouth. I told Ryan, my best pal. Ryan was an Anglo-Indian boy who lived in the neighbourhood. We went to different schools but were very good friends.
Now, Ryan was charmed by the stories that I told him about our god who saved us from all the woes. He expressed his wish to see him. I was troubled. I had promised Jane that I wouldn’t breathe a word about him to anybody. She is going to be mad at me. I thought. Yet, Ryan continued to compel me and I had to finally give in.
I was right. Jane was mad. She was so enraged that she even called me a traitor. She said that I deserved to be thrown out and that I had defiled the sanctity of our god. I was terrified. I begged her not to throw me away. After several hours of pleading and reasoning, Jane suggested that we bring Ryan before the Cactus god and apologize.
The next evening, I brought Ryan home and presented him before our god. Jane trembled and poured the daily glass of water and asked for forgiveness. Ryan and I bowed down before him.
After the water-pouring ceremony, Jane set the glass aside and sighed.
“I hope he forgives,” She said.
The next day was Wednesday. I’d been looking forward for this day for I would be facing Antony again for another badminton match. Do I have to specify who won? I don’t think so because I was destined to win. Antony kicked and screamed out of the court. I bought Annie a can of Mountain Dew from the canteen, as a gesture of gratitude that was due.
He has forgiven. I thought. Ryan and I had a great day.
“Don’t we have to repay him for all that he has given us?” asked Ryan.
His words struck us equally for it had never occurred in our minds that he would want something in return. He was the provider. Did he ever want anything back?
“What about a sacrifice?” suggested Ryan.
“What kind of a sacrifice?” asked Jane.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “In some religions they sacrifice humans to please their gods.”
“Geez! That’s heartless!” she cried out. And I almost choked with my saliva.
“We don’t have to sacrifice a human. What about birds or animals? A stray cat for instance.”
“That’s cruel. Our god doesn’t like hurting anything that breathes,” replied Jane.
“Well, then, why don’t you think of something?”
“I know,” I cut in. “Why don’t we just sacrifice dry leaves? Dry leaves don’t breathe and my textbook says that decayed leaves nourish the soil. After all, our god is a plant.”
“The plant,” corrected my sister, rolling her eyes at me as if I said something disrespectful.
“Alright. Let’s give these leaves in sacrifice to our god.”
Having said so, Jane picked up a handful of leaves and held them high above her head like a priestess.
Daddy and Mummy usually spent Wednesday evenings chatting and playing badminton with our neighbours, right outside our gate. It had become a habit with all the parents in the surroundings. And when Daddy and Mummy indulged in these light social activities, they usually left us in charge of Moses.
In order to preserve our secret, we decided to hold our sacrifice when nobody was around. Moses was chewing on his cigarette and watering the plants on the other end of the garden, which was awfully convenient. Jane, Ryan and I gathered decaying leaves and placed them in front of the Cactus god. After a heap of a respectable size was made, Jane announced that it was time to light the fire.
None of us had a matchbox or a lighter. Ryan insisted that we make fire out of stone like cave men. Obviously, Jane was not pleased with the idea. Yet the three devotees sat down with stones in their hands, rubbing them together until sores materialized. At last Jane got up to execute plan B.
We followed her into the kitchen, where she switched on the stove, rolled a piece of newspaper and placed it above the blue flame. The paper caught fire very quickly and burnt out in a jiffy. Jane rolled up another paper and this time it burnt so slowly that we got time to reach our entity. But again the paper created a tiny cloud of smoke and burnt away leaving the dry leaves untouched.
“Maybe we should pour some oil on the leaves,” advised Ryan.
“I’ll get the kerosene!” I offered and ran indoors. It didn’t take me much time to find the can of kerosene that Daddy had kept inside the kitchen shelf, along with his other tools. I took it and poured lavishly on the dry leaves and then ran to accompany Jane and Ryan as they tried to get the fire. After ten minutes of perseverance and hard work, we managed to maintain a little flame. We sped towards our god.
Our hopes and desires to please our idol of devotion all came to an abrupt end when we saw blazing fire all over the garden. All the plants that covered the ground and the walls saltated madly while a choking smoke filled the air. Ryan screamed and raced out of the garden while my sister and I stood rooted to the spot, devoid of any sort of emotion and watched our Cactus god succumb to the fire and burst into flames of yellow and orange.
How long we sat on the verandah, covered in a blanket, with Mummy’s arms around us, we hardly knew. All the fruits of Daddy’s toil lay charred on the ground. It was morning and we could hear Mummy’s voice, repeatedly whispering, “It’s alright. We’re safe.”
By the time the sun came up, the place was cleaned up and I heard Daddy telling a friend that the fire had not touched the house or any of the electric cables and that it didn’t take the men much time to put out the fire.
I don’t remember much of what had happened that day. Jane and I were too shocked to speak a word. And nobody asked us anything. We were brought home from the hospital after treating minor burns. In the afternoon, Jane and I sat down at the veranda and looked for the remains of our deceased plant god. There were none. We couldn’t make out what went wrong. Perhaps, one of the semi-burnt papers caused the fire. But one thing was sure. Our god was displeased with us.
“He didn’t accept Ryan,” said Jane. “He was angry and he has left us.”
The fact just wouldn’t sink in. I couldn’t believe that our god had left us for good. He had forsaken us. Jane put her arm around my shoulder and tilted her head to touch mine.
Dad probably noticed us, for I saw him approach us. He sat down between us and covered us with his arms. And the three of us sat there in silence.
“I know how you loved your prickly friend. And I’m so, so sorry.”
Daddy comforted us. He spoke very slowly, stopping to choose the apt words.
“You know, sometimes you must learn to say good bye to your loved ones, however hard it may seem. But we must because it is inevitable.”
“I know Daddy, but we’ll miss him. He was our god,” said Jane.
“God?”
“Yes, our Cactus god.”
Jane and I explained all good things that Cactus god had done for us and how all our worries and woes were turned into joy and victory. Tears ran down our eyes, as we told him that everything has disappeared along with him. It was our fault. We were going to be our old insignificant selves again. We were going to be the losers that we were in the first place.
Daddy squeezed our fragile shoulders with his mighty arms and waited till both of us stopped crying. And then he said,
“Jane, Jonah… Just because your plant friend left you it doesn’t mean that you are going to lose everything. You are NOT losers.”
He continued, “You are not insignificant. You never were. You…both of you are brilliant! And even if you lost a few matches or failed a few tests, you will still be brilliant. The number of praises that you get from a few people does not decide who you are. You are what you are. You are what you turn yourself into. And you can be brilliant the way you are. All you need to do is work hard and have faith in yourself. And all the humiliation that you suffered will be forgotten. You will be like the silver that our true God purifies. You know it, don’t you? Ah! Of course, you don’t know it!”
Before we retired into our room, we heard Mummy asking Daddy, “How are they?”
“They are fine. Very brave.”
“Poor kids.”
“Those tender hearts hunger for the spiritual food. I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself if I let it burn out.”
I heard him sigh. After a moment he said. “We’ve really got to pack them to Sunday school. They deserve to receive their share. ”
As I sit in with a pile of girlish posters, postcards and magazines strewn before me and a picture of a huge succulent in my hand, somebody puts an arm around my shoulder and whispers,
“Has my little brother been spying on me?”
Jane smiles at me and then looks at the photograph in my hand.
“Do you still keep this? I found it in your chest of drawers.”
“So you were spying on me.”
I shrug.
Jane takes the decaying photograph from my hand and stares at it, and then says,
“I miss him.”
“So do I, sometimes.”
Neither of us speaks for a while. And then she says, “All I can say is, Rest in peace!”
We laugh. Mummy interrupts us. “Look who we have here.”
Jane and I go downstairs to find Moses, our old, tiny gardener. He has come to invite us for his daughter’s wedding.
“This is great Moses, Congratulations!” I say.
Moses bows his head with unnecessary humility and drops his cigarette pack. He picks it up and Daddy teases him.
“You have changed not a bit. Haven’t you learnt from your experience, Moses? A cigarette kills in ways that you least expect.”
Jane and I look puzzled.
“Take for instance, the fire of ’96.”
Saying so, Mummy and Daddy laugh while Moses lowers his face in shame.
My jaw drops open and I turn to find Jane in the similar condition. We return to Jane’s room in silence. After a while Jane says,
“You know, it’s such a good thing that they’d sent us to the Sunday school.”
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