Recollections 1

Waiting for A Miracle

Lourdes Cathedral, Thrissur, Kerala

I was at the Ernakulam bus station to catch a bus to Aluva. I had come to the town the previous day from Aluva, where I was on a holiday, to meet some friends, and had been persuaded to spend the night there.

Since it was Sunday morning, I didn’t expect the buses to be crowded. But the first bus that pulled up was heavily packed. Since I had only a short distance to travel, I boarded it anyway.

From the animated conversation of the passengers I gathered that they were from Pala and were going to Thrissur for a vision of the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus Christ.

I then remembered that a few weeks ago, Deepika, the Kottayam newspaper owned by the Catholic Church, had reported that the Virgin Mary was appearing every month before two children at a church in Thrissur. The report had mentioned the date of the next appearance too. I decided to go with them to Thrissur to witness the miracle.

When the bus reached Aluva, I did not get down. Instead I bought a ticket to Thrissur.

I was  a college student at that tme, not a journalist.  But it can be said that I already had a toehold in the press. My father was running a Malayalam newspaper, Navabharatham, from Thiruvananthapuram. It had accepted and published a short political article which I had mailed to it under an assumed name and address. When Jawaharlal Nehru visited Thiruvananthapuram, I had gone to the airport and the paper’s Chief Reporter had let me write the report of the reception to the Prime Minister. When Deputy Prime Minister Vallabhbhai Patel visited Kochi, my father asked me if I wold like to report the event and I had covered his activities there.

But I must confess I went to Thrissur with a sceptic’s mind, not a journalist’s.

At Thrissur, all of us alighted from the bus. Being new to the town, I decided to follow the group from Pala.

The courtyard of the Lourdes church was already full when we reached. There were many women and children in the crowd. We were able to squeeze ourselves in with some difficulty.

Soon a priest, a girl and a boy appeared on the veranda on the first floor of the two-storeyed building on the left side of the church. Someone said the children with the priests were the ones before whom Virgin Mary was appearing every month. All eyes turned towards them.

They were looking at the distant sky. We kept turning our eyes in the direction in which they were looking.

The priest announced that the Mother will appear before the children around one o'clock.

The sun’s colour was changing, someone in the crowd said. All around him covered their eyes with the hands and tried to look at the mid-day sun through their fingers. I saw no change of colour. But someone said the sun had turned green. Some people around him endorsed the claim.  When another person mentioned another colour there were people to back that too.

My reading outside the college textbooks in those days included books on psychology. I decided to give my little knowledge of that subject a try. The sun’s colour has changed to blue, I said. Some standing around me readily endorsed that.

I continued to play the game of changing colour of the sun for a while.

The Virgin Mary did not appear by 1 p.m.. But the priest kept the flock’s hope of a miracle alive by repeatedly stating that the children were saying the Mother would come.

Eventually, the priest announced that the children had been informed that Mother would not be coming that day. The disappointed crowd of devotees started melting away.

Coming out of the church compound, tired after the long wait and extremely hungry, I decided to get into a nearby eatery. When I put my hand in the pocket of my kurta, my purse wasn’t there.

While I was conducting my little experiment in psychology, a pickpocket had practised a trick of his trade on me quite successfully!

When I bought the bus ticket for the Aluva-Thrissur segment, the conductor had given back some change. Instead of putting it in the purse,  I had put it in the pocket.

I walked to the Thrissur railway station. I had to go to Aluva, 60 kilometres away. From the fare chart displayed there, I gathered that the change I was left with would take me only up to Chalakkudy, 30 kms away. I bought a ticket to Chalakudy and got off the train there.

I did not have the money to take any form of transport from there to Aluva. So I started walking along the railway track towards Aluva. Shades of night were falling fast when I reached Koratty Angadi station. I had covered barely six kilometres. I reckoned it was risky to walk at night along the unknown track. I sat down on a bench on the platform.

I have not eaten anything the whole day and was very hungry. But I did not ask anyone for help fearing I would be taken for a cheat. After the day’s last train towards Aluva steamed off the station, I stretched myself on the bench and soon fell asleep.

It wasn’t dawn yet when noises at the station woke me up. Apparently the first morning train was due and some passengers had come to board it. I realised that I cannot walk all the way to Aluva on an empty stomach. Reluctantly I walked up to the Station Master and told him my story.

He told me he had seen me lying on the bench when he closed the station the previous night. Shops in the area would not open so early and there was no way he could get me something to eat.

I told him if I could get to Aluva, I would have money for my needs.  Just then we heard the sound of the approaching train. The Station Master gave me a ticket to Aluva.

Back in my room at the Aluva YMCA, I wrote the story of the miracle that was not to be and mailed it to Navabharatham.

Two days later, I took a train to Koratty to pay the ticket money and convince the Station Master that the youngster he had helped was not a cheat.

Someone else was sitting in the Station Master’s chair. I told him I was looking for the person who was there two days ago.

“Oh, you are looking for Balakrishna Menon. He was the Relieving Station Master who came to hold charge when I went on leave. He left when I returned from leave yesterday. i do not know where he has been posted next.”

I have often wondered whether the failed Thrissur miracle was part of an attempt to replicate the Lourdes miracle of 1858.

That year, in the small town of Lourdes in France, Bernadette, a 14-year-old girl, reputedly had visions of the Virgin Mary on a few occasions. The first appearance was when she and two other children went to the forest to gather firewood. The Mother was wearing a white dress.

At the time of the last vision Bernadette asked her who she was, and she reportedly said in the local tongue: “I am the Immaculate Conception”.

The Catholic Church, which investigated the miracle, concluded that  Bernadette had visions of the Virgin Mary. Not all people were in agreement about the vision, but once the Pope accepted the divine miracle the controversy subsided. The Virgin Mary is now known also as Our Lady of Lourdes.

Barnadette was later canonised. Lourdes is now a pilgrimage centre which attracts more than 5 million visitors a year. 

The Lourdes church in Thrissur was built 27 years after the miracle in the French town bearing that name. The failure of the 1950 miracle deprived Thrissur of the opportunity to gain Lourdes-like fame.

The Lourdes church, however, had the privilege of receiving Pope John Paul II when he came to participate in the centenary celebrations of the Diocese of Thrissur. When the Diocese became Archdiocese, the Lourdes church became the Archbishop's cathedral.