Between Two Worlds:

A Journey of Innocence and Intrigue

The protagonist’s experiences of navigating between the contrasting worlds of familial love and societal chaos. It also hints at the internal conflict and growth that the protagonist undergoes as a result of these experiences.

From when I was a lad of ten or eleven, attending an all-boys Catholic school and residing in a village, I was immersed in a world of contrasting experiences.

The village was a sensory delight, with its myriad smells that stirred pleasant shivers within me. It was a tapestry of dark and bright alleys, houses and churches, temples, bridges and human faces, rickety buses, open spaces, and cosy rooms filled with warmth and comfort. It was a place of intriguing stories, tinged with a deep fear of ghosts and the supernatural. The scent of warm cats and houseboys, doctor visits, and garden fruits wafted through the air. Here, two worlds coexisted, each with its unique rhythm of day and night.

One world was my parents’ house, a legacy of my grandfather. We were a nuclear family of five plus one. Our circle also included my paternal grandmother. This world was familiar to me, a world of love and security, role models and school. It was a world of mild splendour, clarity, and cleanliness, where soft, clean clothes, good manners, and afternoon games at home were the norm. Seven pm meant rosary, dinner by eight and into bed by nine pm. One always washed their feet before getting into bed.

In this world, morning religious sermons played on the radio, birds serenaded from treetops, and roosters crowed. It was a world of straight lines and paths that led into the future, a world of duty and responsibility, confessions, forgiveness, good intentions, love, and reverence. It was the world of the Bible and the rosary, a world of wisdom.

Our future belonged to this world, so it had to be clear and clean, beautiful, and orderly.

The other world began right outside of our own house and was completely different. It smelled different, spoke differently, promised, and demanded different things. Farmers and tradesmen, ghost stories and rumours populated this second world. It was a motley flood of tremendously alluring, terrible, mysterious things, things like a slaughterhouse and drunks, wildlife, tales of burglaries, suicide, and yelling. All these beautiful and horrible, wild and cruel things were around, in the street, drunks beat their wives, old women could charm you and make you feel guilty, robbers came in the night, thieves were caught by neighbours. This violent world swelled and smelled everywhere, but not in our rooms where mother and father were.

And that was very good. It was wonderful that we had peace, order, and quiet, duty and a clear conscience, forgiveness and love, and a clear pathway to heaven. And it was wonderful that there was everything else, all those loud and glaring, gloomy and violent things that you can’t help but escape by running to your mother, father, or grandmother.

And the strangest thing was how the worlds bordered, how close they were. For example, our neighbour Mary Akka, sat by the entrance of her house in the evening and sang hymns with a clear voice. She belonged to God when she sang. She became a different woman now, unlike when she was raging mad with her son who had disappeared in the paddy fields.

So it was with everything, most of all with myself. Certainly, I belonged to the bright and proper world. I was my parents’ child, but whenever I turned my eyes and ears, the other was everywhere, and I also lived in the other; although it was strange and uncanny to me, although one regularly there got a bad conscience and fear. Times I liked living in the other world, the forbidden world and often homecoming into the light, necessary and good as it might be, was almost like a return to a less beautiful, a more tedious and plain.

Sometimes I knew my goal in life was to become like my father and mother, my grandfather, so bright and pure, so superior, intelligent, and orderly; but it was a long way to get there until then, you had to school, pass exams and that path always led past the other, darker world, and it was impossible to sink into the other world. There was a story of a prodigal son who had been to the other world but was forgiven and taken back by his father. I did feel that being in my family was more of the right thing, but it was more alluring in the other world, and I felt like rebelling and experiencing the other world, the world of boisterous boys and bootleggers. Sometimes it was a hunch or a possibility, way down in the feeling. When I pictured the devil, I could well picture him in the other world, in disguise or openly, but never in the house. I could picture my guardian angel, with its white wings, behind me when I was in our home or in the company of the clean world or in my dreams.

My sister also belonged to the light world. It often seemed to me she was closer to my mother; they were better, more civilised and more faultless than I was. The sister, like your parents, has to be treated with respect, and if one quarrelled with them, one was afterwards in front of your parents always the bad guy, the instigator, the one who had to ask for forgiveness. If you insult your sister, one insulted your parents, who were good and commanding. There were secrets that I could share with the neighbourhood boys far sooner than with my sister. It was often delightful to play with your sister, be good and civil with her, and see oneself in good and noble appearance. That’s how it had to be an angel.

That was the most we knew, and I thought it sweet and wonderful to be angels surrounded by a light sound and scent like heaven and happiness. Oh, how seldom did such hours and days come? I was often at the game, at good, harmless, allowed games, with a passion and intensity that became too much for the sister, which led to quarrels and unhappiness. When anger came over me, I was terrible and did and said things with depravity. I felt deeply and burning even as I did and said them. Then came bad, dark hours of remorse and regret, the painful moment when I asked for forgiveness, and then on again, quiet and grateful happiness without discord for hours or moments.