Three wishes

“Ask for three wishes. It will be granted,” Manju chechi told me as we herded her little sons across the beach to Madre de Deos Church. During my two two-year stints in Thiruvananthapuram, I had never visited the famed pilgrim centre on the outskirts of the city. I regret it now. Vettukad church, as it is known locally, is a picnic spot too. Overlooking the Arabian Sea, the small church seems blessed.

The children are excited by the vastness of the church premises and the presence of sea. When they are tired of chasing each other, they sit on the foyer, narrating improvised stories. One (or all) of Manju chechi’s wishes will be for them. She too is new to this church and every first time in a church, you will be granted three wishes. That’s what we have been told when we were little children.

I have been so fascinated by the opportunity for easy gratification, without effort and without penance, that I drew up three wishes every time I went to a strange church. Almost all sets of wishes concerned the family’s health, my education and some childhood fantasies, which included some miraculous interventions to win over my first crush, a chubby girl who attended catechism with me.

I devised plans to face her, but never executed any of it. In due course I forgot about that wish and found another sweetheart. Most of the other wishes were granted. I never topped the class, but passed out in “flying colours” each year. Ultimately, the three-wishes scheme was forgotten as I bunked masses and classes without guilt and without excitement. But wishes remained, nevertheless.

An accidental visit to the church caught me off guard. I could not pinpoint three wishes. There are no exams to pass, no diseases to cure and no hearts to win. I have almost learned cycling and swimming after praying for it for years. Postal stamps of Papua New Guinea and Dominican Republic no longer needed providence to come by. Even my younger brother has abandoned the stamp albums.

Since an opportunity to realize three wishes could not be wasted, I widened my search as a politically conscious, socially responsible being. Then I realized the fallacy. Religion can only help the personal. In public affairs, faith doesn’t move mountains. What would god think if he got the following wish list: 1) Please make George Bush repent so he dismantles his nuke pile; 2) Please give some wisdom to Bin Laden so he doesn’t mistake ordinary men for nations and annihilate them; 3) Please tell Paul Wolfowitz not to make the Miserables more miserable.

We can’t pray to god to make all men (and women) good. If he could, he would have made them so despite the serpent and the apple. I wish I wasn’t told that war and violence, poverty and famine, greed and selfishness can’t be wished away. Then I would have lots of wishes to feed this make-believe system.