I paid my first visit to The Banyan in Mogappair Eri Scheme looking to ‘do my bit’ for society and I came back with material for an entire book.
The Banyan is an establishment for destitute and mentally handicapped women who have been found by the roadside, on railway platforms or turned in by their families.
I read about this establishment online and decided to pay it a visit since ‘Women in Trouble’ is a tender subject for me.
I met with some of the staff there including the psychologist, Vaishnavi, who gave me a wonderful description of the selfless work being carried out over there.
It was a little rough to get there: I stay in t. nagar and mogappair eri scheme is more than 45 minutes journey, which I made by share-auto and then I had to get another auto to take me till the main gate since it was my first time at The Banyan but the auto driver and the people around seem to know the place well so I arrived without any hassle.
The stories of the patients/residents is obviously quite heart-wrenching and I can’t believe I don’t feel more appreciative of the gifts I have received throughout my life from the Almighty.
I could put the blame on the fact that hardly anybody will remain at the paying guest where I am put up since deepavali will be celebrated for the next two days in Chennai as well as in the rest of india.
I haven’t even met my room mate.
She wasn’t here when I arrived this morning but that’s not what’s bothering me.
I am alone in a city where I know next to nobody and I have the responsibility of an almost-aged mother on my hands although you wouldn’t believe it when you see her.
I don’t have a job to speak of and I’m living on a very tight budget.
But the Reverend Bishop Joseph put my life in perspective, if only for a little while.
Since I met and spoke to her almost two and a half hours ago, I have been constantly abusing myself and complaining about how ungrateful I am.
When I first noticed the Reverend, I saw a scrawny frame on a proud personality, deep brown kurta, rolled up at the sleeves and off-white colour trousers, also folded neatly at the edges.
The footwear was that which I had worn at school as a kid- white ‘tennis’ canvas shoes with laces.
But the shoes were soaked with muddy water yet they appeared, for some strange reason, as proud as the personality they covered.
The Reverend has pale skin, very European, with light blue eyes and wrinkles to the dozen.
I guessed the age of the Reverend to be not more than 70 years but there’s something very strong about the persona.
It’s almost haughty. Almost.
The Reverend has a short, blunt cut hairstyle, salt and pepper hair and obvious earholes from which no earrings dangle.
When the Reverend desires to read, long, bony fingers reach for a pair of bifocals that sit neatly inside their pen-case appearance.
A pale gold band adorns the Reverend’s ring finger on which there is a small silver cross.
The overall appearance is very, very classy, like someone who is completely aware of themselves and is extremely proud to be what they are, however they might appear.
Sometime later, the Reverend hands me a poem she has written and after reading it I exclaim sincerely ‘’written in a very lady-like fashion by a genuine lady.’’
She turns around and shaking her head at me and says,’’I am a man. I was born a boy. This is what they did to me.’’
A few minutes earlier she had told me that ‘ they’ had cut off her breasts.
*****
When I first noticed her mental condition, I wasn’t even looking in her direction.
I was in the middle of a serious conversation regarding women’s issues and society with Vaishnavi.
My attention was also drawn to a badly disfigured dog who crawled about the entire lobby on only its two front legs.
The right hind leg dragged along uselessly and the left hind leg wasn’t even there.
A greater description of the dog would certainly make you more than a little uncomfortable so I’ll leave it out.
The Reverend, however, showered the dog with affection every few minutes or so.
As Vaishnavi and I are conversing, this pale-faced, blue-eyed, short haired, straight-walking personality comes and seats herself in between us, at a little distance, on the coffee table and starts muttering to no one in particular.
During the course of our imminent conversation, I had to utter, ‘ I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that…could you repeat what you said please?’
Like I mentioned earlier, a real lady.
It is entirely my loss that I do not recall much of the first three minutes of our conversation.
Vaishnavi had, by this time, taken our leave to attend to some important work.
At first, by her neat appearance and comely manners, I mistook the Reverend for one of the staff members who attend to the patients/residents at the Banyan.
I’m almost certain she got my complete attention when she mentioned, in all seriousness that she had been hypnotised and drugged and kept on the premises against her wishes.
I was obviously startled by her words but tried not to show it because I became instantly afraid of her.
Noticing her western European accent and her very visibly pale skin, I asked her where she had come from and she quickly replied J&K.
I was, by now, thoroughly puzzled yet eager to learn more about this person who resembles my maternal grandmother a lot.
She says she was kidnapped from her home while she was eating grilled cheese sandwiches and they brought her to this place where she was soon hypnotised, brainwashed and put under heavy medication.
She also told me that the facility only ‘appears’ to be a place of refuge for the homeless but it’s actually a conspiracy by politicians and the superpowers of the world where they experiment on humans to establish mind-control.
I asked her what kind of drugs they had given her .
She replied saying she had no idea of their names but they force her to take them so she can remain in their power and therefore be unable to uncover their plans before the whole world.
She said she is a Jesuit priest and that the politicians are conspiring against the catholic church.
She claims she is a writer and that she had written articles for the ‘New Yorker Magazine’ of 2010 in the October-November issue and the magazine had received the Pulitzer prize for her article.
I frown and ask her what year is it at the present time.
She replies straight-faced that it is 2012 ‘in Europe’ but that the ‘co-conspirators’ in the facility say it is 2011.
At this point of the conversation and at several others, the Reverend points to the staff and councillors and psychologist Vaishnavi and whispers to me ever so softly that they are all either Russian and/or Italian and that the majority of them are ‘South American’.
She points to one ‘South American’ councillor with a very strong Tamil accent and fairly obvious Dravidian features and motions with her eyes in his direction, ‘him’.
I ask , ‘ really?’ who else?’
She nods in Vaishnavi’s direction and says, ‘ I’m quite sure she’s South American, too.’
I say, ‘no, not her..she doesn’t really look the part.’
The Reverend’s face is momentarily clouded with doubt.
She then tells me that the mind controllers don’t come downstairs and that they are never seen or heard from.
They stay above the immediate facility, on the third floor, to be exact.
Then she leans in and whispers while I lean slightly back, ‘no one returns from “that place” ….’once they are “taken”.
“those who are taken there, are taken ‘care of’, they are never seen nor heard from ever again”.
I ask her, ‘why don’t you run away?’
She says that she’s too weak from the drugs to climb over the fence, moreover, she doesn’t know where she is.
I ask her who brought her here?
She mumbles a word or two, none of which I could catch then rattles off these numbers saying that this is his contact number- 94241119.
I count the numbers, then say, ‘but these are only 8 numbers…’
She says they are of his home address.
I nod sagaciously and utter a long “ohhhhh!”
One of the first things I noticed and liked about her was that she wrote with her left hand.
Scientific research tells us that people who are left handed are more creative and intelligent than others.
I complimented her on this but she said that she was not actually left handed but that since her right hand had been broken she learned to write with her left hand.
All of a sudden, she stood up without saying anything and walked away.
Minutes later she returned with a copy of the Yellow Pages and said that she even knew the address and telephone number of the british consulate but that she couldn’t go there because she didn’t know where Gream Road was.
Moreover , they wouldn’t allow her to make even a single telephone call.
With the ease of an expert, she thumbed through the almost worn-out copy of the Yellow Pages and said that I should take down the address so that I could make my escape.
I remarked that I didn’t find it necessary.
She said it was my decision and that she wouldn’t interfere to make me change my mind.
I asked her how old she was.
She said that she was ‘twenty four years in the faith’.
I wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that, so I asked her , ‘how old are you…in earth years, since you came into this physical world?’
She said, ‘ they have a date written in the records here, but it’s not true, it’s a fabrication, so it does not matter. I know the truth.’
I pressed on,’ what does it say …?’
She looked straight at me and replied pointedly, it does not matter.
The look in her eyes forbade me from pressing the issue any further.
I have left out a few details I noticed along the way starting with some strange tattoo designs I noticed on the outside of both her palms behind her thumbs.
One of them looks like a trident[ trishul] but I cannot say for certain.
She also refused to allow me to photocopy or write down the poem she had written for the New Yorker Magazine.
I asked her for it since it was so beautifully written[it really was!] but she stubbornly refused on all three occasions so I didn’t ask her a fourth time.
Moreover, when I first asked her if she had any family she said she couldn’t remember because of the drugs with which they were filling her system.
Twenty minutes or so later, around the time I had asked her her age, she nodded ‘yes’, that she did have parents,but that they couldn’t find her since they didn’t know where she was ‘being held’.
After a few moments of silence she held out her hand and said, ‘it was nice meeting you’.
I said , ‘ it was wonderful meeting you, Reverend Bishop Joseph.’
She smiled while she looked at the ground and as she was almost completely behind me, I managed, ‘the peace and mercy of our lord be with you, Reverend…’
Without turning back and with that now-familiar cheerfulness, she replied , ‘…and also with you…’
And she was gone.
I sat there for a few minutes with a heavily burdened heart and fought back tears that threatened to have their way with me.
It is exactly 18:57 hours as I type this but night had already descended upon me as soon as I made my way out of the gate and on returning to my lodging, I got busy with writing this piece and haven’t stopped since, not even to attend a call of nature.
I wonder what Michelle Joseph is doing right now[ Michelle Joseph is the name the Reverend says that the staff calls her by, but she claims she knows who she really is and knows what’s really going on in the facility].
She also mentioned that she has neither a sheet nor a pillow nor a blanket given to her by the ‘conspirators’.
As this write-up draws to an end, I bite back a sob.
Goodnight, Reverend Bishop Joseph. My thoughts are with you.
I paid my first visit to The Banyan in Mogappair Eri Scheme looking to ‘do my bit’ for society and I came back with material for an entire book.
The Banyan is an establishment for destitute and mentally handicapped women who have been found by the roadside, on railway platforms or turned in by their families.
I read about this establishment online and decided to pay it a visit since ‘Women in Trouble’ is a tender subject for me.
I met with some of the staff there including the psychologist, Vaishnavi, who gave me a wonderful description of the selfless work being carried out over there.
It was a little rough to get there: I stay in t. nagar and mogappair eri scheme is more than 45 minutes journey, which I made by share-auto and then I had to get another auto to take me till the main gate since it was my first time at The Banyan but the auto driver and the people around seem to know the place well so I arrived without any hassle.
The stories of the patients/residents is obviously quite heart-wrenching and I can’t believe I don’t feel more appreciative of the gifts I have received throughout my life from the Almighty.
I could put the blame on the fact that hardly anybody will remain at the paying guest where I am put up since deepavali will be celebrated for the next two days in Chennai as well as in the rest of india.
I haven’t even met my room mate.
She wasn’t here when I arrived this morning but that’s not what’s bothering me.
I am alone in a city where I know next to nobody and I have the responsibility of an almost-aged mother on my hands although you wouldn’t believe it when you see her.
I don’t have a job to speak of and I’m living on a very tight budget.
But the Reverend Bishop Joseph put my life in perspective, if only for a little while.
Since I met and spoke to her almost two and a half hours ago, I have been constantly abusing myself and complaining about how ungrateful I am.
When I first noticed the Reverend, I saw a scrawny frame on a proud personality, deep brown kurta, rolled up at the sleeves and off-white colour trousers, also folded neatly at the edges.
The footwear was that which I had worn at school as a kid- white ‘tennis’ canvas shoes with laces.
But the shoes were soaked with muddy water yet they appeared, for some strange reason, as proud as the personality they covered.
The Reverend has pale skin, very European, with light blue eyes and wrinkles to the dozen.
I guessed the age of the Reverend to be not more than 70 years but there’s something very strong about the persona.
It’s almost haughty. Almost.
The Reverend has a short, blunt cut hairstyle, salt and pepper hair and obvious earholes from which no earrings dangle.
When the Reverend desires to read, long, bony fingers reach for a pair of bifocals that sit neatly inside their pen-case appearance.
A pale gold band adorns the Reverend’s ring finger on which there is a small silver cross.
The overall appearance is very, very classy, like someone who is completely aware of themselves and is extremely proud to be what they are, however they might appear.
Sometime later, the Reverend hands me a poem she has written and after reading it I exclaim sincerely ‘’written in a very lady-like fashion by a genuine lady.’’
She turns around and shaking her head at me and says,’’I am a man. I was born a boy. This is what they did to me.’’
A few minutes earlier she had told me that ‘ they’ had cut off her breasts.
*****
When I first noticed her mental condition, I wasn’t even looking in her direction.
I was in the middle of a serious conversation regarding women’s issues and society with Vaishnavi.
My attention was also drawn to a badly disfigured dog who crawled about the entire lobby on only its two front legs.
The right hind leg dragged along uselessly and the left hind leg wasn’t even there.
A greater description of the dog would certainly make you more than a little uncomfortable so I’ll leave it out.
The Reverend, however, showered the dog with affection every few minutes or so.
As Vaishnavi and I are conversing, this pale-faced, blue-eyed, short haired, straight-walking personality comes and seats herself in between us, at a little distance, on the coffee table and starts muttering to no one in particular.
During the course of our imminent conversation, I had to utter, ‘ I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that…could you repeat what you said please?’
Like I mentioned earlier, a real lady.
It is entirely my loss that I do not recall much of the first three minutes of our conversation.
Vaishnavi had, by this time, taken our leave to attend to some important work.
At first, by her neat appearance and comely manners, I mistook the Reverend for one of the staff members who attend to the patients/residents at the Banyan.
I’m almost certain she got my complete attention when she mentioned, in all seriousness that she had been hypnotised and drugged and kept on the premises against her wishes.
I was obviously startled by her words but tried not to show it because I became instantly afraid of her.
Noticing her western European accent and her very visibly pale skin, I asked her where she had come from and she quickly replied J&K.
I was, by now, thoroughly puzzled yet eager to learn more about this person who resembles my maternal grandmother a lot.
She says she was kidnapped from her home while she was eating grilled cheese sandwiches and they brought her to this place where she was soon hypnotised, brainwashed and put under heavy medication.
She also told me that the facility only ‘appears’ to be a place of refuge for the homeless but it’s actually a conspiracy by politicians and the superpowers of the world where they experiment on humans to establish mind-control.
I asked her what kind of drugs they had given her .
She replied saying she had no idea of their names but they force her to take them so she can remain in their power and therefore be unable to uncover their plans before the whole world.
She said she is a Jesuit priest and that the politicians are conspiring against the catholic church.
She claims she is a writer and that she had written articles for the ‘New Yorker Magazine’ of 2010 in the October-November issue and the magazine had received the Pulitzer prize for her article.
I frown and ask her what year is it at the present time.
She replies straight-faced that it is 2012 ‘in Europe’ but that the ‘co-conspirators’ in the facility say it is 2011.
At this point of the conversation and at several others, the Reverend points to the staff and councillors and psychologist Vaishnavi and whispers to me ever so softly that they are all either Russian and/or Italian and that the majority of them are ‘South American’.
She points to one ‘South American’ councillor with a very strong Tamil accent and fairly obvious Dravidian features and motions with her eyes in his direction, ‘him’.
I ask , ‘ really?’ who else?’
She nods in Vaishnavi’s direction and says, ‘ I’m quite sure she’s South American, too.’
I say, ‘no, not her..she doesn’t really look the part.’
The Reverend’s face is momentarily clouded with doubt.
She then tells me that the mind controllers don’t come downstairs and that they are never seen or heard from.
They stay above the immediate facility, on the third floor, to be exact.
Then she leans in and whispers while I lean slightly back, ‘no one returns from “that place” ….’once they are “taken”.
“those who are taken there, are taken ‘care of’, they are never seen nor heard from ever again”.
I ask her, ‘why don’t you run away?’
She says that she’s too weak from the drugs to climb over the fence, moreover, she doesn’t know where she is.
I ask her who brought her here?
She mumbles a word or two, none of which I could catch then rattles off these numbers saying that this is his contact number- 94241119.
I count the numbers, then say, ‘but these are only 8 numbers…’
She says they are of his home address.
I nod sagaciously and utter a long “ohhhhh!”
One of the first things I noticed and liked about her was that she wrote with her left hand.
Scientific research tells us that people who are left handed are more creative and intelligent than others.
I complimented her on this but she said that she was not actually left handed but that since her right hand had been broken she learned to write with her left hand.
All of a sudden, she stood up without saying anything and walked away.
Minutes later she returned with a copy of the Yellow Pages and said that she even knew the address and telephone number of the british consulate but that she couldn’t go there because she didn’t know where Gream Road was.
Moreover , they wouldn’t allow her to make even a single telephone call.
With the ease of an expert, she thumbed through the almost worn-out copy of the Yellow Pages and said that I should take down the address so that I could make my escape.
I remarked that I didn’t find it necessary.
She said it was my decision and that she wouldn’t interfere to make me change my mind.
I asked her how old she was.
She said that she was ‘twenty four years in the faith’.
I wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that, so I asked her , ‘how old are you…in earth years, since you came into this physical world?’
She said, ‘ they have a date written in the records here, but it’s not true, it’s a fabrication, so it does not matter. I know the truth.’
I pressed on,’ what does it say …?’
She looked straight at me and replied pointedly, it does not matter.
The look in her eyes forbade me from pressing the issue any further.
I have left out a few details I noticed along the way starting with some strange tattoo designs I noticed on the outside of both her palms behind her thumbs.
One of them looks like a trident[ trishul] but I cannot say for certain.
She also refused to allow me to photocopy or write down the poem she had written for the New Yorker Magazine.
I asked her for it since it was so beautifully written[it really was!] but she stubbornly refused on all three occasions so I didn’t ask her a fourth time.
Moreover, when I first asked her if she had any family she said she couldn’t remember because of the drugs with which they were filling her system.
Twenty minutes or so later, around the time I had asked her her age, she nodded ‘yes’, that she did have parents,but that they couldn’t find her since they didn’t know where she was ‘being held’.
After a few moments of silence she held out her hand and said, ‘it was nice meeting you’.
I said , ‘ it was wonderful meeting you, Reverend Bishop Joseph.’
She smiled while she looked at the ground and as she was almost completely behind me, I managed, ‘the peace and mercy of our lord be with you, Reverend…’
Without turning back and with that now-familiar cheerfulness, she replied , ‘…and also with you…’
And she was gone.
I sat there for a few minutes with a heavily burdened heart and fought back tears that threatened to have their way with me.
It is exactly 18:57 hours as I type this but night had already descended upon me as soon as I made my way out of the gate and on returning to my lodging, I got busy with writing this piece and haven’t stopped since, not even to attend a call of nature.
I wonder what Michelle Joseph is doing right now[ Michelle Joseph is the name the Reverend says that the staff calls her by, but she claims she knows who she really is and knows what’s really going on in the facility].
She also mentioned that she has neither a sheet nor a pillow nor a blanket given to her by the ‘conspirators’.
As this write-up draws to an end, I bite back a sob.
Goodnight, Reverend Bishop Joseph. My thoughts are with you.
I paid my first visit to The Banyan in Mogappair Eri Scheme looking to ‘do my bit’ for society and I came back with material for an entire book.
The Banyan is an establishment for destitute and mentally handicapped women who have been found by the roadside, on railway platforms or turned in by their families.
I read about this establishment online and decided to pay it a visit since ‘Women in Trouble’ is a tender subject for me.
I met with some of the staff there including the psychologist, Vaishnavi, who gave me a wonderful description of the selfless work being carried out over there.
It was a little rough to get there: I stay in t. nagar and mogappair eri scheme is more than 45 minutes journey, which I made by share-auto and then I had to get another auto to take me till the main gate since it was my first time at The Banyan but the auto driver and the people around seem to know the place well so I arrived without any hassle.
The stories of the patients/residents is obviously quite heart-wrenching and I can’t believe I don’t feel more appreciative of the gifts I have received throughout my life from the Almighty.
I could put the blame on the fact that hardly anybody will remain at the paying guest where I am put up since deepavali will be celebrated for the next two days in Chennai as well as in the rest of india.
I haven’t even met my room mate.
She wasn’t here when I arrived this morning but that’s not what’s bothering me.
I am alone in a city where I know next to nobody and I have the responsibility of an almost-aged mother on my hands although you wouldn’t believe it when you see her.
I don’t have a job to speak of and I’m living on a very tight budget.
But the Reverend Bishop Joseph put my life in perspective, if only for a little while.
Since I met and spoke to her almost two and a half hours ago, I have been constantly abusing myself and complaining about how ungrateful I am.
When I first noticed the Reverend, I saw a scrawny frame on a proud personality, deep brown kurta, rolled up at the sleeves and off-white colour trousers, also folded neatly at the edges.
The footwear was that which I had worn at school as a kid- white ‘tennis’ canvas shoes with laces.
But the shoes were soaked with muddy water yet they appeared, for some strange reason, as proud as the personality they covered.
The Reverend has pale skin, very European, with light blue eyes and wrinkles to the dozen.
I guessed the age of the Reverend to be not more than 70 years but there’s something very strong about the persona.
It’s almost haughty. Almost.
The Reverend has a short, blunt cut hairstyle, salt and pepper hair and obvious earholes from which no earrings dangle.
When the Reverend desires to read, long, bony fingers reach for a pair of bifocals that sit neatly inside their pen-case appearance.
A pale gold band adorns the Reverend’s ring finger on which there is a small silver cross.
The overall appearance is very, very classy, like someone who is completely aware of themselves and is extremely proud to be what they are, however they might appear.
Sometime later, the Reverend hands me a poem she has written and after reading it I exclaim sincerely ‘’written in a very lady-like fashion by a genuine lady.’’
She turns around and shaking her head at me and says,’’I am a man. I was born a boy. This is what they did to me.’’
A few minutes earlier she had told me that ‘ they’ had cut off her breasts.
*****
When I first noticed her mental condition, I wasn’t even looking in her direction.
I was in the middle of a serious conversation regarding women’s issues and society with Vaishnavi.
My attention was also drawn to a badly disfigured dog who crawled about the entire lobby on only its two front legs.
The right hind leg dragged along uselessly and the left hind leg wasn’t even there.
A greater description of the dog would certainly make you more than a little uncomfortable so I’ll leave it out.
The Reverend, however, showered the dog with affection every few minutes or so.
As Vaishnavi and I are conversing, this pale-faced, blue-eyed, short haired, straight-walking personality comes and seats herself in between us, at a little distance, on the coffee table and starts muttering to no one in particular.
During the course of our imminent conversation, I had to utter, ‘ I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that…could you repeat what you said please?’
Like I mentioned earlier, a real lady.
It is entirely my loss that I do not recall much of the first three minutes of our conversation.
Vaishnavi had, by this time, taken our leave to attend to some important work.
At first, by her neat appearance and comely manners, I mistook the Reverend for one of the staff members who attend to the patients/residents at the Banyan.
I’m almost certain she got my complete attention when she mentioned, in all seriousness that she had been hypnotised and drugged and kept on the premises against her wishes.
I was obviously startled by her words but tried not to show it because I became instantly afraid of her.
Noticing her western European accent and her very visibly pale skin, I asked her where she had come from and she quickly replied J&K.
I was, by now, thoroughly puzzled yet eager to learn more about this person who resembles my maternal grandmother a lot.
She says she was kidnapped from her home while she was eating grilled cheese sandwiches and they brought her to this place where she was soon hypnotised, brainwashed and put under heavy medication.
She also told me that the facility only ‘appears’ to be a place of refuge for the homeless but it’s actually a conspiracy by politicians and the superpowers of the world where they experiment on humans to establish mind-control.
I asked her what kind of drugs they had given her .
She replied saying she had no idea of their names but they force her to take them so she can remain in their power and therefore be unable to uncover their plans before the whole world.
She said she is a Jesuit priest and that the politicians are conspiring against the catholic church.
She claims she is a writer and that she had written articles for the ‘New Yorker Magazine’ of 2010 in the October-November issue and the magazine had received the Pulitzer prize for her article.
I frown and ask her what year is it at the present time.
She replies straight-faced that it is 2012 ‘in Europe’ but that the ‘co-conspirators’ in the facility say it is 2011.
At this point of the conversation and at several others, the Reverend points to the staff and councillors and psychologist Vaishnavi and whispers to me ever so softly that they are all either Russian and/or Italian and that the majority of them are ‘South American’.
She points to one ‘South American’ councillor with a very strong Tamil accent and fairly obvious Dravidian features and motions with her eyes in his direction, ‘him’.
I ask , ‘ really?’ who else?’
She nods in Vaishnavi’s direction and says, ‘ I’m quite sure she’s South American, too.’
I say, ‘no, not her..she doesn’t really look the part.’
The Reverend’s face is momentarily clouded with doubt.
She then tells me that the mind controllers don’t come downstairs and that they are never seen or heard from.
They stay above the immediate facility, on the third floor, to be exact.
Then she leans in and whispers while I lean slightly back, ‘no one returns from “that place” ….’once they are “taken”.
“those who are taken there, are taken ‘care of’, they are never seen nor heard from ever again”.
I ask her, ‘why don’t you run away?’
She says that she’s too weak from the drugs to climb over the fence, moreover, she doesn’t know where she is.
I ask her who brought her here?
She mumbles a word or two, none of which I could catch then rattles off these numbers saying that this is his contact number- 94241119.
I count the numbers, then say, ‘but these are only 8 numbers…’
She says they are of his home address.
I nod sagaciously and utter a long “ohhhhh!”
One of the first things I noticed and liked about her was that she wrote with her left hand.
Scientific research tells us that people who are left handed are more creative and intelligent than others.
I complimented her on this but she said that she was not actually left handed but that since her right hand had been broken she learned to write with her left hand.
All of a sudden, she stood up without saying anything and walked away.
Minutes later she returned with a copy of the Yellow Pages and said that she even knew the address and telephone number of the british consulate but that she couldn’t go there because she didn’t know where Gream Road was.
Moreover , they wouldn’t allow her to make even a single telephone call.
With the ease of an expert, she thumbed through the almost worn-out copy of the Yellow Pages and said that I should take down the address so that I could make my escape.
I remarked that I didn’t find it necessary.
She said it was my decision and that she wouldn’t interfere to make me change my mind.
I asked her how old she was.
She said that she was ‘twenty four years in the faith’.
I wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that, so I asked her , ‘how old are you…in earth years, since you came into this physical world?’
She said, ‘ they have a date written in the records here, but it’s not true, it’s a fabrication, so it does not matter. I know the truth.’
I pressed on,’ what does it say …?’
She looked straight at me and replied pointedly, it does not matter.
The look in her eyes forbade me from pressing the issue any further.
I have left out a few details I noticed along the way starting with some strange tattoo designs I noticed on the outside of both her palms behind her thumbs.
One of them looks like a trident[ trishul] but I cannot say for certain.
She also refused to allow me to photocopy or write down the poem she had written for the New Yorker Magazine.
I asked her for it since it was so beautifully written[it really was!] but she stubbornly refused on all three occasions so I didn’t ask her a fourth time.
Moreover, when I first asked her if she had any family she said she couldn’t remember because of the drugs with which they were filling her system.
Twenty minutes or so later, around the time I had asked her her age, she nodded ‘yes’, that she did have parents,but that they couldn’t find her since they didn’t know where she was ‘being held’.
After a few moments of silence she held out her hand and said, ‘it was nice meeting you’.
I said , ‘ it was wonderful meeting you, Reverend Bishop Joseph.’
She smiled while she looked at the ground and as she was almost completely behind me, I managed, ‘the peace and mercy of our lord be with you, Reverend…’
Without turning back and with that now-familiar cheerfulness, she replied , ‘…and also with you…’
And she was gone.
I sat there for a few minutes with a heavily burdened heart and fought back tears that threatened to have their way with me.
It is exactly 18:57 hours as I type this but night had already descended upon me as soon as I made my way out of the gate and on returning to my lodging, I got busy with writing this piece and haven’t stopped since, not even to attend a call of nature.
I wonder what Michelle Joseph is doing right now[ Michelle Joseph is the name the Reverend says that the staff calls her by, but she claims she knows who she really is and knows what’s really going on in the facility].
She also mentioned that she has neither a sheet nor a pillow nor a blanket given to her by the ‘conspirators’.
As this write-up draws to an end, I bite back a sob.
Goodnight, Reverend Bishop Joseph. My thoughts are with you.
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