050. Rise Of A Star. Scenes From The Life Of Jesus Christ. Paintings Of James Tissot Part 1 By P S Remesh Chandran

050

Rise Of A Star. Scenes From The Life Of Jesus Christ. Paintings Of James Tissot Part 1 

P. S. Remesh Chandran

Editor, Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum

Article Title Image By Angeleses. Graphics: Adobe SP.

First published: 28th Dec 2012

In the modern day world, tracing the life of a great man is not difficult, for there would be photographs of his taken by contemporaries in his time. But what would we do to observe the life of a great man who lived among us before 2000 years? We have the only option of searching for paintings that may exist in castles, caves, churches, monasteries or archives. Luckily, to view the like of Jesus, we have a unique collection of paintings done by a single person, saved at a single repository.

Holy Virgin Mary in her early life, a maiden.
 

The Holy Virgin in her youth.

There have been thousands of paintings based on Jesus Christ’s life, done by hundreds of gifted painters in all countries, done in all centuries. These paintings include those done by such talented and gifted ones as Andrea del Castagno, Andrea del Verrocchio, Boticelli, Caravaggio, Dieric Bouts, El Greco, Filippino Lippi, Fra Angelico, Giovanni Bellini, Hieronymus Bosch, Leonardo da Vinci, Ligier Richier, Lotto, Mark Antokolski, Nicolas Poussin, Perugino, Peter Paul Rubens, Piero della Francesca, Piero di Cosimo, Pieter Brueghel, Raffaello Sanzio, Rogier van der Weyden, Signorelli, Tintoret, and Titian. Most of them are lost, some of them are in public museums and churches and not a few of them are in private collections. Not one can see them all even if he is blessed with so many lives. There have been artists who attempted picturizing scenes which he liked and admired, and also there have been other artists who attempted painting all the important scenes like a historian whether he liked and admired those scenes or not. There have been much differences in drawing the face of Christ. There have also been much differences in the artists’ research and learning the costumes, backgrounds and body postures in Jesus’ times. There have been excellently bright pictures done in vibrant colours by artists who could afford costly materials. And there also have been equally brilliant pictures done by poor artists on cheap materials who could not afford even the buying of their daily bread. They all shared one thing in common- exhilaration at the simplicity and humbleness of that divine life. If you want to follow the life of Jesus with your eyes, without straining unnecessarily to read printed words, your choice of artists are very limited for the brightness of the picture and the likeness of the face of Jesus changes with each artist. The author’s selection is James Tissot, and the readers can have the privilege of reconstructing the life of Christ with other painters. Anyway it would be a worthwhile attempt for we would be going through everything man was born with, passing through anger, darkness, tears and sunshine, especially learning the meaning and purpose of tears.

Testing of the suitors of the Holy Virgin.

Testing the suitors of the holy virgin. James Tissot.

A fine collection of scenes from the life of Jesus Christ, done by a 19th century painter named James Tissot is saved and collected at one place, the Brooklyn Museum. He did these paintings in water colour over a charcoal base on woven paper, all four hundred of them, probably commissioned by a church, taking only six years from 1886 to 1894 to finish them. We cannot all go there and see these pictures and go through the life of Jesus Christ once again, but they magnanimously shared those magnificent paintings with Wikimedia Commons, a few of which are reintroduced here in the order of their happening in the real life of that great revolutionary. We are greatly indebted to both these great institutions for making this endeavor possible. Links to both these institutions are provided at the end of this article to lead readers to these two repositories which made this great service of storing safe the scenes from the eventful life of the saviour of this world, a saviour spiritually and physically.

It is the early life of Jesus Christ that is pictured here, from the girlhood of the Blessed Mother, her betrothal to Saint Joseph, the anointment, the birth of infant Jesus among sheep and cows in a manger, the visit of the three magician priests from the East, the slaughter of all infants who might become a challenge to king Herodes, the flight of this holy family to Egypt, their sojourn in Egypt and their return from Egypt, the presentation of Jesus in the temple and the last picture of Jesus Christ carrying a wooden plank, before he vanished at the age of twelve years. There would be three more articles that would be published here, if circumstances permit. They are Jesus- The Healer, The Story Of A Crucifixion and What Happened After The Cross.

Betrothal of the Holy Virgin and Saint Joseph.

Betrothal of the holy virgin and Saint Joseph.

James Tissot, the French painter who lived in Paris and London during the years 1836 to 1902 abandoned all his other subjects when he was moved by the pictorial scopes of the New Testament. He painted nearly 400 of them within the six years between 1886 and 1894, all in the simplest of mediums, opaque watercolor over graphite on gray wove paper. In Brooklyn Museum’s words, these paintings were hall marks of ‘archaeological exactitude and historical authenticity’. To learn the customs, costumes, architecture and landscape of the Holy Land, he travelled through the Middle East and took countless number of photographs and made innumerable number of drawings. These paintings were purchased by public subscription. The people of Brooklyn at the turn of the 20th century took a public collection called out by the newspaper Brooklyn Daily Eagle, purchased the paintings and made them available on public display at the Brooklyn Museum. The world has to thank them three for this great act of theirs which kept these pictures in public custody instead of reaching private archives.

The Annunciation. Fulfillment of divine intentions.

The Annunciation. James Tissot.

Like all mothers in the world, Mary also was a lovely young girl, attending dutifully the chores of a community life. Like all mothers, she also was betrothed to a person. The only difference was, since it was destined to give birth to a saviour of the world whom she will have to loose at an early age which was known to eastern sages, and also since she will have to undergo the hardest and severest trials in her life which would be shared by a man, her husband had to be carefully chosen to help facilitate the completion of the mission. So, her suitors were tested.

Birth of Jesus Christ in a humble cattle shed.

The birth of Jesus in a humble cattle shed.

Annunciation, reincarnation, etc are alien to many communities and sects in the world but it was not so with the ancient Egyptians and Indians. Egyptian and Indian beliefs and faith are confident about the truth of both. Are we not all annunciations of our creator irrespective of our parents’ bodily relations? Are we not reincarnations of our ancestors, imitating them in speech, gesture, look, walk, conduct, and nature, everything, made possible by the mysterious messengers whom we call genes?

The adoration of the shepherds.

The adoration of the shepherds.

Population census in old times was different from now in that now enumerators come to our house but then people travelled to the city for their count and details to be taken. Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem to take part in the census but did not get a place for Mary to give birth to her child. They knocked on every door but could not find a place. Every house and public place been occupied, she got shelter in somebody’s cattle shed. There was none to attend Mary in her pains. God had chosen his son to have the lowliest and most humble place for his birth. The most innocent and worthy beings in the world, sheep and cows, witnessed the birth. Apart from the incessant snow and cold, it was the most stainless birth for a human. It was the simplest of people, belonging to the most ancient of professions, shepherds, who first came to see the baby, with presents of course. Great things start simple.

Three Magician Priests from the East, guided by a star, journeying to see the child.

Three magician priests journeying from the east.

Three magician priests in the east, probably in India, Tibet and Afghanistan, glimpsed the appearance of a new star in the sky and sensed that a divine birth has happened somewhere in the world. Star watching had been developed by then as a full fledged science among the ancient Indians and the Babylonians. These three magician priests from the east, or Magi in the short form decided to trace the child who would be very divine for his birth to be announced by the appearance of a new star. They decided to follow the path guided by the lonely star, the lode-star, wherever in the world that child might be. Bearing eastern presents like camphor and saffron, suffering hardships all the way, they travelled thousands of miles through snow-clad mountains and parching deserts, accompanied by their people, staff and spies, and finally reached where the star led. 

The adoration of the three Magician Priests from the East.

Adoration of the three magician priests from the east.

The presence of so large a group of persons from the east cannot be hidden from the city authorities. They certainly had to pay a visit to Herodes. Either they might have been successful in revealing not the actual purpose of their journey or the exact place of their visit. A king can guess many things in his intelligence or his courtiers can. He already knew there would be challenges to his throne and that the challenge in only newly born. He ordered the killing of all newly borns. Why the story of Christ is linked with the story of Christna we can guess now. Lord Krishna when he was born, was prophesied to have born to kill his uncle, the king Kamsa. He knew about the prophecy but did not know which child. Therefore he ordered killing of all newly borns. Krishna’s father folded him in a shawl and in heavy rains, while a huge snake provided umbrella protection, took him secretly to safety and hiding. Scholars believed, the names Christ and Jesus were given by the Hindus of India coining from Sanskrit which infuriated the Sanskrit-studied European Max Muller who attempted vainly to disprove this belief. 

The massacre of the innocent childen by King Herodes.

Massacre of the innocent children by soldiers.

Countless number of newborns were slaughtered by the king's soldiers to prevent one among them growing up and de-throning him some day. 

The flight of Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph and Infant Jesus into Egypt.

The flight into Egypt.

Look, the bent head of Mary, tilted down by the burden of the world's sins and crimes, is what the author of this painting wanted the world to note. To save one's child, to save the world, to rescue humanity, what persecutions and hardships will a mother have to undergo during her life? Since the birth of the child, never had she got a moment of solace or relief, except when looking at its tiny face. 

The sojourn of a Holy Family in Egypt.

The sojourn in Egypt.

It is not the only time in world's history that holy persons have had to flee. Lord Krishna and Prophet Muhammad Nabi also had to flee from pursuers at one time in their lives. Many have lived in exile, before returning to teach the world goodness. Sree Rama, Pandtava Princes in Mahabharatha and King Nala had to live in hiding for many years. They had to make their living at those times, obeying the customs of the land which gave them hiding, engaging in what occupations were available there.

The return from Egypt.

The return from Egypt.

Now the boy is grown up, nearly twelve years old. Watchful eyes of spies of the Magi might be following them from a distance. They know the boy would be recognized, and are prepared to take him with them to safety.

Jesus lost and found in the temple.

Jesus lost and found in the temple.

Presenting a child at the temple was a custom, not only in Jerusalem but in every ancient community. Jesus also was presented so soon as he was returned from Egypt. No sooner than he entered the temple than he was lost. The father and mother who searched for him everywhere at last happened to hear a serious discourse made by a little voice to a large group of listeners inside one part of the temple. It was little Jesus giving a lecture on theology to a very attentive audience. We know how authorities will become suspicious when a child 12 years old appears from nowhere all of a sudden, that too 12 years after the massacre of all new born babies in Jerusalem who might grow up as a threat to King Herodes’ throne. We have to assume that there were spies from the east, looking for any threats to the child and report back to the three magician priests. 

The last picture of Jesus before the time of his vanishing.

The youth of Jesus before vanishing.

There has been debates on where Jesus had been during the years he vanished. It is only logical to assume that the three magician priests from the east took him back considering the child’s safety and the importance of his mission. They trained him in the north eastern kingdoms in India, moved him through Ladakh to Tibet and returned him to his place of mission after 18 years of education. It is not strange to note that most of the people in these north eastern states are now Christian and their native language is now English. 

Note:

It is not irrelevant here to include a note of comment by the author, published elsewhere:

‘2000 years back, when this famous carpenter of Jerusalem, fleeing from the traitors and aggressors and wormy authorities of his land to secure his life and save his philosophy till his mission is completed, found safety, security, hospitality, solace and moral fighting powers in the far northern native kingdoms of India. That is how the missing years in the life of Christ is explained. When he was born in a cattle shed, again due to haughty abuse of authority, three magician priests from the east, that is from India, read the stars and found their way through thousands of miles to the west to bless the newborn babe, all this journey guided by a lonely star. In those times star watching had developed as a full practical science only among the Indians and the ancient Babylonians. The spices they brought to the child as presents also denote the land where they came from. In ancient Greece, when the great teacher Socrates succumbed to death in an evening in a prison cell in Athens, Plato wept and decided he would take revenge upon the authorities for the death of his master. When advised by friends to flee from Greece before authorities found and executed him too, he fled, travelled the route Alexander later took and reached India. His missing years were spent in India, learning the philosophies and fighting talents, which he when returned, displayed brilliantly and became the master of kings. We see in history, after the execution of Socrates for criticizing state, after just three generations in the time of Aristotle, Socratic philosophies became the ruling principles of the state when King Phillip of Macedonia appointed Aristotle as Alexander’s master. Many anti-religious people in Asia, especially in countries like communist China do not know India became home to how many thousands of Jews who lost homes during the mad military maneuvers of the two world wars. They do not even know how many millions of Nepalis, Burmese, Tibetans, Kashmiris, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis refugees India received and protected during international power turmoils. During these turmoils, countries like these closed their borders. The Hindus, Christians and Muslims of India, with traditional true Indian hospitality, receive anyone who has lost a home. The honourable Dalai Lama was not the last. He has been living in India with his people for half a century, happily accepting India as their second home. He was not a citizen of China, but he lost his home in Tibet, the most un-Chinese act in the past century from the un-Chinese rulers of China. He will return to his free nation. The people of India will see to it. India can shelter, protect and train every lone bird which has lost its sky and nest. It is a generations- old tradition of India. Every returning bird will capture the world, and India will smile inwardly and go on as before’. 

 
A great people, city and institutions who preserved the pictures.
 

Pictures Courtesy: First and foremost we are to thank those citizens of Brooklyn City who took a public collection and kept these pictures in public custody. We are immensely indebted to those two prestigious Institutions Wikimedia Commons and Brooklyn Museum for magnanimously making available these pictures to the public. And our thanks and respect goes to James Tissot for rendering these paintings beautifully for posterity.

Link to Brooklyn Museum: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/
Link to Wikimedia Commons page:
'http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:The_Life_of_Jesus_Christ_by_James_Tissot'


Dear Reader,
If you cannot access all pages of P.S.Remesh Chandran, Editor, Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum, kindly access them via this link provided here:
https://sites.google.com/site/timeuponmywindowsill/wiki-nut-articles

To read about the life and people of Kerala, the author’s native land, visit KERALA COMMENTARY here.

For more articles of this kind, visit SAHYADRI BOOKS here or BLOOM BOOKS, TRIVANDRUM.
Comments

Sivaramakrishnan A
31st Dec 2012 (#) 

Very thought provoking, passionately written. Lots of events of history and interpretation of religious texts have to be deduced and derived from various sources. I believe nothing are cast in stone as those who record are human too lending themselves to own interpretations. They can be carried away too - siva

PSRemeshChandra
1st Jan 2013 (#) 

The changes happening in our being causes us write. And our writing causes us change. I do not know which force is stronger. You would know better. Since I became familiar with the paintings of James Tissot, I had this feeling they had to be reintroduced before a very good reading public. After publishing and seeing them for the first time in the form of a web page, I also discovered one new thing: seeing them by scrolling from down to up provides a new experience, that of going to the past of Christ, he becoming tinier and tinier till he becomes a lovely tiny little baby.

Buzz
31st Dec 2012 (#)

Fabulous Star article on the life of Jesus, dear friend, with beautiful images to boot. Happy New Year!

PSRemeshChandra
1st Jan 2013 (#)

The time draws near the birth of Christ,
The moon is hid, the night is chill,
And Christmas bells from hill to hill
Answer each other in the mist.

Happy New Year to Dear Buzz, and all by Wikinut Friends.

 

042. Darlings Of The Department. The Story Of Harry Vinoir. By P S Remesh Chandran

042.
  

Darlings Of The Department. The Story Of Harry Vinoir. By P S Remesh Chandran

Editor, Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum
  
First published: 6th Jan 2012

When someone steals 3.2 millions from government treasury, causes the death of one woman, two children and three men in this adventure and escapes into the safety of a promotion post of a very senior officer in that government, a few will admire him but the majority of the people in the world will wonder who is ruling Kerala and if there is any law and policing there. Any sensible person will ask who that rogue is. Read here the true story.

A Story from the The Hospital Window Series- True stories of what one sees through hospital windows from the inside and from the outside.
 

This story is from the archives of the imaginary investigative organization ‘Kerala Peoplez Vigilenze’, included in their forthcoming book 'The Hospital Window'. 'The Hospital Window Series' contains true stories of what one sees through hospital windows from the inside and from the outside. Many people have the notion that educational qualifications, ability and skill are the determinants for selection and promotion in government services. This notion is held by more and more people nowadays, following the American government’s decision to recruit persons into their services more through telephone interviews than through face to face interviews so that the colour and beauty of applicants shall not be a consideration. The American government's decision is admirable in that selecting only the beautiful, fleshy and protein-rich ladies into the services can be avoided and coloured people too, if with enough abilities, could get their rightful chances. It is an action which several nations and states in the world, some of them claiming to have achieved complete socialism and some claiming even to be God's Own Native Land have not been bold enough to take. But wait till you read this story which I tell you here, before deciding who will eventually become the darlings of government departments.

Doctors never commit suicide because they have enough patients there to kill through their blunders.
 

Many years back, when it was a time of no mobile phones, internet or television, the newspapers in Kerala celebrated a story. An employee in the District Surgeon’s Office in Trivandrum organized large scale monetary crimes following which a doctor and his family, including his wife and two children, were found dead in a hotel room in the capital city, with burned currency notes of higher denominations scattered everywhere around them in the hotel room. It should be noted here that doctors rarely take their own lives when there are enough poor patients for them there to kill silently and deliberatively through their greed and blunders. It should also be considered that whatever complexities they themselves have got into, they would be having highly placed persons in their contact to get them out of any kind of problem and that theirs is a profession they are licensed to practice till the end of their days unlike those of the other senior civil servants of their rank and genre. That is why the world seldom hears about doctors committing suicide anywhere. So naturally the revelations following this multiple suicide, if it was suicide, became exceptionally sensational in Kerala and remained bold frontline headlines for months to come in all major and minor newspapers in the state. Since old dated copies of these papers are available in the State Public Library in Trivandrum for the reference of anyone who is interested and also since it is not the right thing to give undue publicity to these papers, we shall avoid mentioning their names here.

  

Where did all those bundles of currency notes to burn in a hotel room come from?

   

Now since it was a multiple suicide by a reputed doctor and his family in a hotel room, with currency notes scattered everywhere which in itself was rare, it became great news. The social, political and civil service life of this doctor was scrutinized into and in the investigation which followed it was revealed that this doctor was a very generous person whenever money came his way. It was reported that he was generous in presenting rich sarees and gold ornaments to his subordinates, especially ladies, frequently. It mostly happened when bills for the special expenses of his hospital were cashed from the government treasury. He was an Assistant Surgeon in charge of a rural Primary Health Centre in a very remote hamlet called Vellappil. It is now relevant here to note how funds for a small hospital are received encashed and accounted for. The money to be paid as salaries to the staff would be provided in advance in the budget plan of the department for the year, for the encashment of which no allotments of funds are needed. Medicines and other stores for the hospital would be issued from the government stores according to requirement and indents. All other inevitable expenses will have to be got approved by the District Surgeon’s Office and allotment of funds will have to be received both in the institution and in the concerned treasury before presenting the bills.  

Simply put a zero on the right side of 10,000 in a government communication and 1, 00,000 will come your way.
 

How does an allotment for a certain amount reach a remote hospital? Newspapers also brought out how it is done, every single stage explained in detail, for a column is a column, a page is a page and here the news is anyway free. Suppose an amount of Ten Thousand rupees has to be allotted to Vellappil Hospital for purchasing stationary, sanitation materials for field services or for securing local services such as loading and unloading of materials or coolie labour. A triplicate allotment letter would be prepared in the District Surgeon’s Office. A Yellow copy will go to the concerned government treasury to enable them to set aside sufficient amount to pay when the bill is presented. A Blue copy will go to the concerned institution. A White copy will remain in the District Office as office copy. Then there will be the ledgers and registers in the office wherein notings will be made. The clerk will write 10000 toward the left of the column, leaving space for a single digit on the right edge of the entry in the paper. The higher officers will compare the figure with the ledgers and registers, approve and sign the allotment and return the file to the clerk’s table. The clerk will then put an additional Zero on the right, making the figure 100000 and send the allotment letters to the Vellappil Hospital and the Treasury there. The additional Zero will be put only in the Yellow and Blue copies and the White copy will remain unchanged in the original file. Thus the officials in the District Surgeon’s Office normally will not know about this cheating until one of them becomes suspicious or it is caught in the next audit by the internal wing of the department or by the Accountant General, provided none other is involved in this racket. Thus the doctor will mix original vouchers for 10000 with bogus vouchers for 90000, present a bill for 100000 rupees in the treasury and encash the amount. It was later revealed that the actual 10000 indeed was utilized in the hospital against original vouchers, another 10000 was spent on silencing a few, 30000 became the doctor’s lavish money to be spent at his will and the rest 50000 straight went to the clerk in the District Surgeon’s Office. A very lucrative deal indeed, until caught.

Perpetrators of a crime taking their own lives, one, two, three, except the original plotter.
 

Burning currency is a serious crime. Those officers who went after the burned, semi burned and unburned bundles of notes in the hotel room eventually found out that the clerk in the District Surgeon’s Office was the original planner and founder of this racket, that he was simply captivating a convenient doctor from a peripheral institution to execute his agenda and that they had already stolen 32 Lakhs rupees within a period of one year. It was also found out that the treasury officials could easily have detected this theft when inconceivably high bills began to be presented from a minor institution while annual such expenditure from other similar lower hospitals remained below just two lakhs rupees during those decades, and that not less than two treasury officials were receiving their share of the loot. The peon of the hospital who was assigned the duty of going to treasury for cashing the bills was satisfied with just his liquor money. When investigations progressed and the vigilance net came closer and closer, this person took his life, leaving his family orphans. Then there was the clerk of the institution who actually prepared the ballooned up bills. The next mysterious death was his, which also was supposed to be suicide. The death toll now has reached six. The stealing of 32 lakhs rupees from government coffers took the lives of three men, one woman and two innocent children. Now, of the four perpetrators of the crime, only one person is alive - the clerk in the District Surgeon’s Office, the original plotter of the crime. Newspapers happily brought out how many cars he bought, how many bungalows he bought and how many acres of land he bought in Trivandrum city. A heinous crime committed by a greedy government official resulted in leaving behind it a trail of suicides, the unwanted death of six persons, including two infants. Any alert administration and people will shake the world with news of apt immediate punishment, but not civilized Kerala. When faced with such sinful a situation, some will suicide, some will confess and go to the confines and solitude of prison and some others will repent, but not our man. The greatest wonder in Kerala is that even the loss of six human lives and 32 lakhs rupees from government treasury caused no prosecution, conviction and jail terms. This was an incident which seriously raised the question, whether any real laws are really existing there in Kerala or is Kerala simply boasting about civilization.

Steal 32 lakhs from government, join ranks of caste zealots, escape punishment, and get promoted as officer.
 

Now we come to our character, Harry Vinoir, the original plotter and designer of the scheme. He is now the only alive perpetrator of the crime which took the toll of six human lives. Everything regarding his past and present have been brought out by the newspapers. His two bungalows, three cars, five bank deposits and four stretches of purchased land in the city are now public knowledge. The department could do only one thing decent-promote him. He deserves it, considering the department standards. But due to public pressure and wide media attention they reluctantly had to suspend him from service, ordering a departmental enquiry the order for which was issued not by the reluctant department but by the government in the face of public accusation and considering the gravity of the situation after six deaths. Been recruited into service following the death of a relative in service, this employee had strong family supporters in the department. Moreover, he belonged to the forward Vinoir community of Kerala, the rotten caste system of which land is famous all over the world for its notoriety and unjust favouritism. He did not hesitate to join their ranks and make his way to the upper leadership of the caste organization. The Vinoir community in Trivandrum did not find it an abomination and shame to elect him a leader in the Vazhuthanakkadu branch of their organization which assured him impunity from punishment for his crimes. They simply became bound to help him in spite of the notoriety of his crimes.

If one is skilled enough to steal millions from government, generous enough to share it and belongs to some upper caste, Kerala is God’s Own Country for him.
 

We will think that the person, our Harry Vinoir, is now spending his life in jail or he is engaged in some other employment after serving his jail term. Actually his protectors in the department, the community figure heads, by stalling the enquiry, gave him enough time and lee way to argue that the enquiry is belated, he is already punished psychologically, there is no evidence against him and that he should be retaken into service. With lightning speed, they sent him to some remote institution where it was some fouled up doctor’s duty to re-enter him in service by simply writing in his service book ‘reinstated in service and rejoined duty’ without mention of number or date of a reinstatement order or even affixing a copy of the suspension and reinstatement orders in the book. In fact, the government that suspended him later revealed that it never issued an order reinstating him. Neither the department did, for that matter. It was another trick employed by devious minded government officials. Wait for one or two years till the uproar over the issue silences, simply fabricate orders, simply sent the favourite to some distant institution and simply write that some he has rejoined duty. It is that simple in Kerala, provided one is a member of the crooks’ clan. Now there is no hindrance to promoting him and the machinery moved on, well oiled up. The fact that the top authorities who reviewed his requests for these many promotions failed to note that copies of suspension and reinstatement orders and number and date of reinstatement order were absent in his service book serves as proof for how wide and omnipotent the hold of the crook’s clan and caste zealots is in the administration in the state. Within a few years Harry Vinoir was first promoted as an Upper Division Clerk, then as a Head Clerk, then as a Junior Superintendent and now he is on the brink of promotion to the post of a Superintendent. If one is skilled enough to steal millions from government, generous enough to share it and belongs to some upper caste, anything is possible in Kerala: Kerala is God’s Own Country for him. It is the benefit of being a darling of the department. Not one government official from the top most to the bottom ever asked that most feared question: “Why was the money stolen from government not ever recovered?”

Some sinners, when they reach the tranquil abodes of saints and holy people will repent deeply and redeem part of what humanity was lost from them.
 

Sin is something that creates in some of us the false notions of religion. When we know that everyone knows we are crooked thieves who did unspeakable crimes, some of us will decide it is time to make a show of religion and piety. So Harry Vinoir decided to lean on some respected man of miracles so that the blood of half a dozen human lives could be somewhat washed from his hands. Now we are entering a part of our story which never should have happened. Who served hundred thousands of acres of parched fields and villages in dry Andhra Pradesh with water? Who inspired thousands and thousands of writers, singers and dancers with sweet melodious songs in the bygone era? Who solaced desolate millions, sitting in a bamboo hut in the midst of a vast yellow mustard field in his rustic native hamlet? Who founded and directed the biggest free hospital in Asia? Our animal which is Harry Vinoir selected the learned Satya Sai Baba to lean on. What can Baba do against such sinners and hypocrites joining and maligning his sacred organizations? Vinoir made it a great show, sang bhajans and went pilgrimages. Some sinners, when they reach the tranquil abodes of saints and holy people will repent deeply and transform their minds into other configurations without knowing, redeeming a part of humanity that was lost from them, but not our man! He is in his heart and blood a beast that wallows deep in the wormy pits of fleshly pleasures. One will wonder if this creation has a family of his own and why his wife and children did not enter anywhere in our story. Let us not further pain them, those pining human souls who on their way to eternity, though for a very short time, got entangled in the clutches of this wretched god-abandoned thing.

He, in his heart and blood, is a beast which wallows deep in the wormy pits of fleshly pleasures.
 

Flesh is something important and influential in government services. When a fleshy, protein-rich lady with sufficient curves and projections comes to work in an office, several changes in seating arrangements and sections would be made there to sit her as lightly and cozily as the sex-starving officers of that office could do. In a particular government office, the clerks were previously sitting in two rows facing each other. One saw the face of the other and communicated well. With the arrival of one such lady, the junior superintendent of that office ordered the seats to be placed one behind the other, all facing him so that he can feast on the face and curves of the new arrival. Now all see another’s back, which is taboo in the East and now there is no communication between anyone but discord. The officer looked up some book, coined a new phrase and said it was Ahmadabad- Model Administrative Change! When the new arrival did not like one particular section since it involved actual work, another rearrangement in sections was made to suit her disturbing all others and when she did not like the second one too, a third rearrangement was ordered. One senior and reliable officer of that institution commented that the girl had to learn to do actual work, not show curves. Curvaceous flesh can move officers but not office files. It needs learned work and dedication to move them. Then one day the husband of this lady came to that office shouting that his wife has been going out with that junior superintendent, their family is on the brink of ruin and that this cannot go on. Following advice from her new lover, she filed law suit for divorce and her two little children thus lost a father. It needn’t be specially told here that this junior superintendent was our Harry Vinoir. So now we know that a born sinner will never repent and that heaven will not touch the devil. A mad dog will not cure and that is why the world kills it. A person who is left at liberty and freedom to destroy human lives everywhere will continue to do it without remorse or hesitance. He leaves a trail of destruction behind him, his intolerance for having been exposed once brutally expressing itself in causing him to destruct whatever solid human creations and relations he comes across. Learning about this incident of the birth of two new orphans and the prospect of two more suicides, many wondered how long he will continue this destruction of human lives. A few say, till he also takes his own life.

Dear Reader,
 
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Tags
 
Caste Zealots And Criminals , Crimes That Went Unpunished, Darlings Of The Department, Escapees From Crimes, Hospital Crimes, Kerala, Kerala Commentary, Kerala Life, P S Remesh Chandran, Sahyadri Books And Bloom Books Trivandrum, Short Fiction, Short Stories, The Hospital Window Series Stories, The Story Of Harry Vinoir, True Stories
  

Meet the author
PSRemeshChandra
 
Editor of Sahyadri Books & Bloom Books, Trivandrum. Author of several books in English and in Malayalam. And also author of Swan : The Intelligent Picture Book.