Though there was a considerable age difference between Father Mulligan and Reverend Ipe, and though they belonged to different denominations of the Church (whose only common sentiment was their mutual disaffection), both men enjoyed each other’s company, and more often than not, Father Mulligan, would be invited to stay for lunch. Long after he grew up and became a priest, Reverend Ipe continued to be known as Punnyan Kanj -Little Blessed One-and people came down the river in boats all the way from Alleppey and Ernakulam, with children to be blessed by him. The future Reverend, skidding on his heels, rigid with fear, applied his terrified lips to the ring on the Patriarch’s middle finger, leaving it wet with spit The Patriarch wiped his ring on his sleeve, and blessed the little boy. Seizing his opportunity, his father whispered in his young son’s ear and propelled the little fellow forward. They found themselves right in front of a group of people whom the Patriarch was addressing in the westernmost verandah of the Kalleny house, in Cochin. In 1876, when Baby Kochamma’s father was seven years old, his father had taken him to see the Patriarch, who was visiting the Syrian Christians of Kerala.
Reverend Ipe was well known in the Christian community as the man who had been blessed personally by the Patriarch of Antioch, the sovereign head of the Syrian Christian Church -an episode that had become a part of Ayemenem’s folklore. John Ipe, who was a priest of the Mar Thoma church.
Every Thursday morning Father Mulligan came to Ayemenem to visit Baby Kochamma’s father, Reverend E.
He was studying Hindu scriptures, in order to be able to denounce them intelligently. When she was eighteen, Baby Kochamma fell in love with a handsome young Irish monk, Father Mulligan, who was in Kerala for a year on deputation from his seminary in Madras.
0 kommentar(er)
