The first time that I wore the burkha, I felt like a scarecrow standing all alone right in the middle of the green green green paddy fields. The burkha was all black. The fabric was slippery. Why did I think of Sr.Bernadina when I first wore the black slippery burkha? She was wearing a white cassock and it gave her a rare quality of godliness.
Sr.Bernadina taught us Physics. The properties of light to be precised. Just that one chapter and she left the school. Nobody knew why. At least we students didn’t know the reason. And I, inquisitive as ever had the audacity to ask the all-flesh-no-bones head mistress the reason for the sudden absence of my saintly physics teacher. The short session with the head mistress went along with these lines
She came sailing along the corridor like a blown up bubble gum ready to burst and I confronted her like a pointed needle.
“Mam… What happened to Sr.Bernadina?”
I knew that the question itself was a bit blunt with a tinge of arrogance in it.
Mrs. Big Bubble starred at me as if I was an alien from out of space.
“What did you ask?”
I answered her with my masterpiece innocent smile.
“Well, mam… I was thinking… Well… she was a good teacher… and… she left us all of a sudden.”
“So what?”
“Is she ill or something”
The level of my innocence touched the all time high. And big bubble with all her experience behind her big behind experienced wickedness in my voice.
“Go to your class young lady and don’t you push your nose into unwanted things.”
So saying she drifted along the corridor leaving behind the stench of starch on linen.
Nuns never wear black cassocks. Black is the colour of grief. Nuns never have a sense of humour. All they have is black humour. Well anyway Sr.Bernadina installed some sense about light and its effects into my teeny weeny teenage brain. White reflected light and black absorbed it.
Well if light is supposed to be a symbol of knowledge and if black is supposed to be a symbol of grief can I come to the conclusion that me in my slippery black burkha was in grief and was ready to absorb the knowledge of grief.
Burkha gave me a sense of security. Although the security was falsehood. A false sense that I was secure from the piercing eyes of a male world. Nobody could trace my bodyline once I was inside the black sack. The piercing looks got reflected from the black fabric but the sunlight was absorbed and I felt like a fuming volcano.
The netted slit for my eyes gave me the freedom to observe the outside world. I could see everyone and nobody could see me. I felt like god. Black God!
Was it the devil inside me that made me to tear off my black slippery burkha and come out into the open? If so, the devil inside me is a lover of freedom.
“That girl is unpredictable, for a minute she was Halal inside the burkha and the next minute the fat Harami tore it off…”
“It’s inside her blood… a mixture of Ibileese and Dajjal.”
“Djinns are ruling her destiny”
Comments from the family members and neighbours shifted me from one spotlight to the other. Spotlights of sins. It was then that I got the idea of pealing off my skin. This strange idea of discovering my inner self came to me like a white light from outer space. This strange white light illuminated my inner self and a stereophonic sound entered my inner ear saying…
“What lies beneath
Is what matters.
Rest is just a flesh mask…”
I thought about Sr.Bernadina once again. I thought about the Theories of Light that she taught me. Her mellowed voice was all around me. Her angelic face beamed at me.
“Light never penetrates the skin. It just makes it dark. The light from inside makes you glow all over.”
I felt ignited. My inner self started to glow. I felt as if on fire. The flames inside me started to flow. I felt like a flaming sun. I felt like the glowing moon. I felt like the twinkling star. And then suddenly the inner voice said.
“You are just a single ray of the sun,
You are just a simple beam of the moon,
You are just a simple gleam of the star,
You are just a fire fly locked in a jar.”
The burkha was my jar, my black bell jar. The minute I tore it off the world around me was illuminated from the tiny light of the fire fly. The minute I tore it off my whole inside was illuminated by the bright light emitted from the torch light of an unknown power.
Sr.Bernadina once gave me an advice. It was during one of my bouts of depression. She took me aside, put an arm around me, looked straight into my eyes and smiled. Her smile emitted light.
“Dear child… light comes to those who see it. So open your eyes.”
So saying she opened the Bible at random and asked me to read the first line that caught my eye.
“Read it out aloud, my child…”
And I read it out.
“….. and God said Let there be Light…..”
Suddenly Sr.Bernadina stopped me and recited out aloud.
“….. and God said Let there be Light and you came into this world.”
May be it was these sort of theories of light that Sr.Bernadina invented that made the authorities to expel her. May be I too might get expelled from my community for practicing the theories of light taught to me by Sr.Bernadina.
