Yesu came to Nazareth when I was away, asking anyone he could find if they would like for him to die for them. Before this, Yesu had been to Tirunelveli. In the quaint words of Arputharaj, Yesu walked into the Diocese office in Palayamkottai, wearing a salt-and-pepper stubble. He was clad in tailored black linen trousers and a readymade light brown cotton short-sleeved shirt. Upon seeing the state of things, Yesu kicked at the table—at such force that his left leg did not know where the right leg had been to—and chased away the two escorts. “You’ve turned this den of thieves into a whorehouse,” he cried. He then grabbed two 20000 superstrong beer bottles and smashed one each on the faces of Paul and Athisayam. Whether at the time Yesu wore sandals or shoes, Arputharaj was not sure.
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Yesu came to Muthalaimozhi in a town bus. At Pichamuthu’s house, he sat on an armless plastic chair and ate rice with pepper rasam and bitter gourd fry from an ever-silver plate that was placed atop a wooden stool. After lunch, Yesu came to a Prosopis juliflora and asked if it would like for him to die for it. The tree responded by creaking at him, then it breathed long and hard all the oxygen in the atmosphere and emitted a shitload of carbon dioxide. “Tree by tree, you and your kind will be cut or deracinated, and seed by seed burned to ashes.” Thus he put a curse on it. Hours after Yesu came to Nazareth, Athisayam did arrive—a bandage over his beak and a patch over his right eye—in his Toyota, all by himself, Paul having fled.
Balan came to Yesu and said, “My daughter Arputhaselvi was born fair-skinned but now she’s so dark brown, boys of dark complexion call her blackie.” Yesu looked up at the sky and quickly back down, but still saw burning butterflies in his vision. “Ah! Sun of a Dutch!” he said. “Tell her to look up exfoliation.”
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Yesu then walked Nazareth its length and girth. Some responded to Yesu by roaring; some by cooing, meowing and cackling; and many replied by hissing and barking and by emitting carbon dioxide. I have often seen lambs entering the church leaving behind paw prints of wolves, but this?
“Show us who you really are,” demanded Gladwin, rocking his goatee, so Yesu gawkily bent and folded up the legs of his trousers. “The Lamb, The Lamb,” the flock mumbled, as they pulled back in disbelief, and Athisayam said, “See, didn’t I say so? Where are the damned cops? They’ll whip the skin off your balls. Just wait and see, disfigured dick.” Yesu then turned toward someone in the crowd, who seemed to be trying to get closer, and said, “Come forth, brother.“
“You go forth, come forth to me and I will… so many times, so hard, so fast and so forth it will feel like I’m forever… and I’ll throw you into the unsahikable sewer the town is made of, for my siblings to lick out the rest of you.” That was Charlie, supposedly sober, condensed.
Mudevi appealed to Yesu to cure her juvenile Caldwell of his verbal abuse of the daughters of the town. “Just in case,” he said and handed her the number of the lady cop Jeba. “Yesuve, what’s the best skin color in your eyes?” came Kazhuthe. Yesu walked into the hardware store, pulled out a paintbrush, held it before his eyes and said thus, “Go to St. Luke’s Hospital, rub your face and body very hard against that unpainted wall.“
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Yesu later went to Prakasapuram where Sister Lucia pinched him by his left cheek bone and tugged. “So you really are Tamil,” she said and looked puzzled. “Thamizh,” mumbled her aide Stella. Yesu looked at them like, When will they allow me to grow the shuck up?, and said, “I come from Naasareth.” Up to this point it was believed Yesu was either British or Portuguese or American or sometimes a Jew and many things were said of him and uttered to him with the confidence that he would not understand Tamil.
Meanwhile thugs came and pled with the police to protect them. “Aiyarval is vacationing in Ooty,” Paambu whispered to the cops who looked like they were asking, Who let the God out? “Come or I’ll drag you, runaway train wreck,” Kombu said to Yesu, and Yesu said, “Adadaa! TASMAC studious, follow me.”
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The convent kid, Ben from Nagaland, sang a tune out of the Bride’s Shotgun Wedding, tapping the dust under his sneakers. Yesu walked back to Nazareth.
At the Co-operative Bank turning, from the other side of the road, Lackadaisygal raised her hand and called out, “Hey, come here, you.” With the police Jeep carrying Kombu and Paambu behind him, near Jubilee Street, Yesu witnessed the funeral procession for Anbu. Yesu then looked like,Yuck! I want to visit Erusalem, but it was ten miles too far away, at this point.
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The last person Yesu asked was the newborn Sharon, when he halted before Meeran Bakery. She replied, “Wooh.” Who would dare say yes to such a thing. And yet Asir is said to have said yes, but that is only a rumor. Raasathi is said have said no and she is borderline bonkers. I believe I have not done many bad things except maybe for leaving my droppings on the walls of the ever-erect church tower. Yet I am no dove—only a mortal, feeble, petty pigeon. So had he asked me I would have likely said girkblirkgirk.
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It was Anil and Heber who went everyplace Yesu went, hopping from tree to tree. Anil did not, however, enter the church where Yesu was placed under house arrest for the rest of the evening. Later that day, Heber was trapped and fried by the amateur palm squirrel hunter Godwin, so we never had the pleasure of hearing his side of the story.
Was Yesu promised the handling of tens of sand trucks? No one knows for sure but for the recent reports of lamb hoofmarks in locations where truckloads of sand had been dug out mysteriously.
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Some well-meaning octogenarians, seeing the luxury cars lined up before the church during times of festival query, “Where’s Yesu?” Peering into the best of those pristine windows they say, “Aren’t you in there somewhere, Kristhu?”
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Ahimaz Rajessh has been lately published in Flapperhouse, The Fractured Nuance, 7×20, Cuento, and unFold. His writing is forthcoming in Milkfist, theEEEL, and Strange Horizons.
Photo by: Ana Prundaru