The Third Side of the Coin – By Capt. Elmo Jayawardena
I remember a Christmas a long time ago. I was in my teens; my father was unemployed and things at home were really bad. We were practically poorer than anybody else I knew. But Christmas came the same way, the winds blowing cool as the months changed from November to December. Shops were getting their fill of parent Santa Clauses. The quantum of the celebration in every home was relative to the bulge of the family purse. People were getting ready to have a bash at the birth of Christ, a two thousand year old festivity that had its humble beginnings in an unknown obscure manger, in the even more obscure Palestinian town called Bethlehem.
We did not have any money. But that didn’t stop us from doing what little we could to brighten our own Christmas. I remember our Christmas tree; this was no beautiful pine in leafy green with the special pine smell. No chiming little golden bells. Our tree had no twinkling lights either, nor any gaily coloured tinsel. There were no miniature angels with harps and halos. Our Christmas tree was a Jambu branch. We scraped the leaves off and erected it in an old Nestpray tin filled with sand. The tin itself was covered with coloured paper. What we hung on the Jambu branch is still vivid in my memory; little meaningless things, anything that came to hand that looked hangable. That was our Christmas decor. They hung and swung on the Jambu branch, all sizes and all colours, all totally valueless, acting merely as a compensation for the tree’s emptiness. We even tucked small balls of cotton wool between the tendrils to depict snow. Man, didn’t we have imagination.
We had Christmas cake too, our cake was Kattabibikkan, which my mother made out of treacle and coconut. It tasted all right if your pallet wasn’t fussy. I guess real Christmas cake was a patent of the rich. Maybe that is why they called it rich cake.
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We had this little crib, a plastic crib (I fail to recall where we got it from) It was the size of a little shoe box. The crib had a musical machine which when wound played the chimes of silent night. But there was a slight problem. It had no speed control. When it was fully wound it played silent night at Rock and Roll speed and as the winding came to an end it dragged like a duet between Domingo and Pavoroti. This little plastic crib was the pride of our Christmas decorations. When someone came to the house one of us would run and wind the crib and we listened to the little chimes with varying speeds as if the very heavens were singing them for us.
I remember that Christmas very clearly. We never went to church as a family. My father had left the fold of the faithful and my mother too was on her way out. We, the children, each trudged to church on our own, solitary celebrants of Christmas. That night I was getting ready to go to church. I looked for some thing to wear that would be reasonably acceptable to the glittering social standard of the midnight church service. The only trouser I had was made of jungle khaki, a green materiel that was somewhat a refined version of what the soldiers wore in the military. It looked all right if the lights were not so bright, but the church was like Flushing Meadows, lit like a tennis court. No way could I hide there in jungle khaki. I felt ashamed; I felt the need to be better dressed. So I folded the trouser and went back to sleep. No church, no worship, no clothes to go. That was my Christmas.
In the morning I went to church, jungle khaki clad. The early morning mass was usually attended by the lesser children of God. One could hold his own there even in jungle khaki.
Today when I look back, I kind of feel awkward. I feel that I let myself down by not going to church in what ever I had to wear. I feel ashamed that I didn’t have it in me to stand and worship God with people who wore their best. I feel ashamed to think that I valued myself so little. But then, that was a long time ago, in another world. It was a sad and timid world of the poor that I was part of; I was too young to realise at that time that there was much more to men and women than the clothes they wore.
Nowadays when I go to church on Christmas day I make sure I am ordinarily dressed. Sometime it may appear as a foolish gesture. I do not question the validity or reason. I know some people wonder why I always wear rubber slippers to church. There are no explanations needed. It is very much personal. I am thinking of someone like me in my jungle khaki days, someone without the proper clothes. Perhaps he may be able to shed a shred of his shame seeing me in church with him, sharing the embarrassment of his attire.
I know there are so many people today like I was yesterday. People who do not have the means to celebrate the birth of Christ. They have children who believe in Santa Clause’s generosity and write meaningless letters that never gets replied. There are those who erect Jambu branch Christmas trees and hang stupid things to swing. There are those who eat Kattabibikkan and pretend it is rich cake. There are people who avoid church and children who select lesser services to hide their shame. We as Christians at times forget the unimaginable agony suffered at Christmas by the less fortunate.
Unfortunately there aren’t that many people who had seen both sides of the coin, the poor side and the better off side. I call them the people from the third side of the coin. The ones who have seen poverty at its extreme and then had managed to drag themselves out of the mire. They are the ones who know the dilemma and the agony of life’s multiple manifestations of poverty. They are the ones who have a duty to voice an awareness, specially at times that are known to embarrass the less fortunate.
This year too, I will go to church dressed up in my almost jungle khaki trousers. I’ll wear my slippers, perhaps look a bit ridiculous. I’d rather be that than forget my own awkward experience and dress in my best.
I would appreciate if these lines I write are read in the same context that it is written. There is no criticism here, nor any form of anyone’s condemnation. I believe that those of us who are on the “third side” should make their own narrations, to tell about the side we left behind, the side that suffers in silence. They too are entitled to the joys and blessings of Christmas. Maybe what I have written will influence a few, perhaps even one, to follow me to church attired in a manner that creates no difference.
I like to think that this simple gesture would help some young man sitting in a corner, in a jungle khaki trouser, feel that he is not cornered.
Capt. Elmo Jayawardena
Elmojay1@gmail.com
