BREAKING BREAD WITH A NUN

Chenda had published the Malayalam translation of this article a few months ago. “That was a time when , as well-wishers , and friends with a trusted crew we were let into the poignant realities of the marginalised lives of a broken but courageous trio. At that time l did not know when Sr.Ranit would come out to reveal herself so l spent special moments with her respecting her stand completely ” says Smitha Janet Nilgiris.After years of ordeal , an identity protected Survivor Sr.Ranit decided to come out now, on the other end of the desolate tunnel to the media, in person.

At the centre of one of the hardest and recent scandals that rocked the Catholic Church in its global history is the Nun from Kerala who accused Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Jalandhar, of rape. In the case that ensued, protests and activism snowballed into public support. The struggles and fall out of the sisters, besides the imprisonment and acquital of Bishop Franco, is media history. Living under State protection and having her identity concealed, Sister goes through her daily reality away from media glare, but in the knowledge of human and inhuman influences directly affecting her hidden and still , altogether disallowed to hide, freely breathe or escape, form of existence. With the lack of closure, justice and resolution to years of searing accountability to Church, herself and others, she lives on, in a desolate, damp, mold-ridden Convent tucked eerily away amidst acres of rubber estate in her home State of Kerala. Her only companions are the two leftover nuns from the beginnings of their turmoil.

Disturbed for the Sister at the centre of the story and other sisters who under oppressions of various hues were withering out of their nunhood, I embarked on the planned journey with the crew and the Film Maker friend of the sisters, for a visionary shoot of One day in the life of Sister. She had obliged to come out of the shadows, trust and permit the well-wisher Film Maker who had travelled with the Convent through their thorns. Shooting the lives of the sisters in 24, silent, meaning-packed hours, we came back to our respective zones moved by the experience that created inexplicable tectonic shifts in our minds.

We had shot the sisters as they tailored and handstitched at the sewing machines. We witnessed and recorded silences many in those rooms. In one instance lights emanating from the needle points alone were the lights for the shoot. All else were switched off. A striking metaphor to their lives suggested itself to me in those moments. Later the team moved on to the kitchen where, like siblings in our own kitchen, chatting, helping, grinding, grating and extracting coconut milk, like any Keralite cooking space their movements and cuisine evoked all the flavours and aroma of gentle sisterly expertise and concern.

I had carried a few table napkins, flowery, cotton and bright for them when I packed for the trip. Happy to receive them they speculated what uses they could put them to in kitchen or dining space. Cloth, led them to enquire about the textile industry for their tailoring needs.

We weren’t disturbing the equilibrium or frequency of the place even with our footsteps, noises or whispers during the shoot. Every sound and gentle move was captured with its fullness uncompromised. The nuances of this non-interfering, non-participating fly-on-the-wall technique were briefed to me during the journey to the sisters. As the camera began to work, I imbibed, the nitty-gritties of a beautiful mode of reality-capture with a new awe for silence. It was fantastically moving to see the images of the sisters on the camera’s monitor. At one point l chanced upon an intense, emotion- enveloped look in the   Film Maker ‘s eyes as he  gazed unblinkingly at the monitor.

The sound of the walkie talkie from the police outpost was an accustomed sound in our recording by now, no longer an outside thing. Very organically their lives played out before us. The outcome of the shot was soothing and satisfying not because they were in a natural act but because there was no act. They were innocent of the camera. Their obliviousness  to the camera was striking. When they did become conscious of    on a few occasions it was touching.

While serving dinner for us we naturally shot them. They were requested to once again bring the dishes from the kitchen to the table, to which one sister exclaimed “Appol” (in that case) in innocence, “ is it alright if we go back and forth with the same dish in hand? Shouldn’t we need to be honest that we prepared  little for you?”

The second day was unbelievable for me for the immediacy of everyone around to synchronise with the mission. Conventine ways now lent themselves easily to us. Following a morning coffee, in due silence we recorded them at their joint morning prayers in the Chapel. Sister took the crew along the architecture of the old and new buildings, the plucking of fruits and vegetables, walks to monitor the surroundings, cultivation and poultry, dutifully obedient to Joshy Joseph’s signs and inputs. During small breaks we let our guards down, joked, laughed and mingled warmly.

I spent time with them helping them unwind when the crew was not at work and at breaks, we helped ourselves to black coffee and relieving tea. Kind, friendly, accommodating and genuine in their approach to the vision of our 24-hour involvement with their dullened yet superconscious lives, they flowed into the theme of the purpose with an ease, leaving, from a world full of taboos ,their footprints in us, the privileged ones from a world with hardly many taboos.

Once, when the crew was at shoot elsewhere, Sister walked up to me with a saucer of gravy and a piece of chicken to taste. I did and gave an opinion. She spontaneously said  in the vernacular,“Drink up the gravy,dont care for  manners now!” When l smiled in refusal, like a child she licked up the gravy with her fingers and quipped. “This one’s for behind the scenes! Thats what they call it isn’t it?” l walked up and planted a kiss on her habit’s shoulder and turned. She let out a laugh.

While we had the camera on, she would guide her tailoring girls, take phone calls from family,  have Government machinery indulged by friends,tend to the plants, the  building and cook for us. She placed a bucket of very hot water before my doorstep when she woke up for serving morning coffee.Later placed freshly plucked  guavas in my hands and took the plucked chillies to the kitchen. She packed a good meal for the worker outside supporting in their fields.

During one shooting moment ,another sister gestured to me to not stand but to  come and sit near her in a chair, little  knowing it was in the field of the camera.The  artistic dream  of the Film Maker, the adeptness of the Cameraman,the dedicated Sound recordists and few supporting staff in the team pleasantly moved in the hushed, respectable hallways of their hospitality and understanding capturing other sights and  sounds in which they were not present.

It was aesthetically discovered that the terrace was highly lucrative to visuals and interactions owing to the freedom and expanse it afforded. In the attempt to take a panoramic view, we registered a beautiful perspective of the place and the  three people at the terrace. The weather on that pleasant monsoon evening was friendly, The lighting before sundown perfect, the sombre clouds loomed large, and the sisters made themselves oblivious to the camera once again .While making my way up to the terrace from the the dark silences of the corridors below, Bishop Franco’s audacious words as quoted in the News Minute disturbed me, as a witness to cornered sisterhood pushed, to the fringes to survive or perish unaddressed. His objectionably sexist remarks referred to Finger tests that would prove the multiplicity of partners a woman is deemed to have had. It was not the patriarchy or condescending nature of his ‘Test parameters’ that only disgusted me, but the fact that an accused and self acquitted Bishop who the eyes of the public and Faithful know,  walked into these portals and lived here few times, that uttered them.

At the terrace was a Cross overlooking the Convent. We recorded the sisters as they talked, sat discussing, joked, asked doubts and walked across its length with a resigned familiarity with their place. When Sister was settled,  in an unplanned gesture Joshy Joseph sat her down in a chair, sat himself down on a low  cement structure near  and prepared her for the only conversation that enveloped her ever in our visit..lt was  at the 24th hour of the 24 hour shoot, about her life and predicament. A visibly distraught expression  but one of cooperation was on her face. “When you once said, ‘Winning or losing it is a Cross (kurishu) to me’ what did you mean Sister ?”Joshy asked. She was lost for an answer. Writhng agony was spreading in her consciousness. He warmly brought a closure to the evening, the endeavour and event saying “A transfer is all you had asked in the beginning isn’t it ?” She held back from breaking down, yet  tears rolled down her shaking face and said “if only I knew what might of the system was in store for me when I entered it, I probably would not have ventured to fight it. I thought it was justice I would get, but we got crushed.” Joshy’s eyes welled up on seeing and hearing her distressed reality, articulated in earnest helpless defeat. “I am going to withstand and continue, now that it has brought me to this” she said.

Everyone recording and bystanding were silenced  for long moments in solidarity with that strength gathered within the Reverend Sister in a habit, whose life we bore witness to, in all it’s truth and gentlenesses. As we wound up the enterprise and walked down the terrace I felt was I the only one thinking: the housing has no bright light, the walls no good paint, the floor no warmth, the roof no safety, the building no life. Yet in this  hostile atmosphere, three leftover lives was padding and paddling  each in the discomfort of living their inevitable lives.

After embracing the sisters to bid them goodbye l was determined to write about this up close encounter.The journey back was a quiet one for me.l was the only woman in the team. To be a woman in a habit,in professional clothing,in that dirty old saree to spare bent over a paddy field or on a construction site is to be a woman, in every pained, feminine, shamed and recuperating sense of womanhood after an assault ,on the inner core of your shivering essence is made by the male gaze. How to respond to inner brokenness is utterly a private, sensitive inexplicability. The initial shocks to the soul of womanhood, would burn the defences down when society’s laser view is on sexual information within the precincts of religion. More so when it  is a known man  who is the force you are fighting and the system he powerfully embodies is the might you are weighing your vulnerabilities against .What then remains, is developing an immunity to agony by coming to terms with the sickening baggage. Fighting very private details in the public square causes an exhaustion. This exhaustion was writ as grace all over Sister’s smiles and silences .

P.S. l surprised myself the very first day by indulging in a naughty , gourmet – shaming  clandestine act of clean eating  out of the  Mann Chatti.( clay mud pot ) in the kitchen .After the chicken curry had left for the dining  table in propriety – ridden hot cases the pot was being  taken to the kitchen sink by a nun.l recalled it, secured it and asked for the soft bread seen around the place.Out came a person, Sister,to share this levelling,domestic, feminine kitchen secret with me.l broke my silce with Sister,and  amicably,unabashedly we cleared the warm ,ground spices from our ‘Chatti’.

The highlight of my kitchen experiences was,when, the following day, my partner in crime, called out “Come along, the Meen chatti (fish clay pot) is free and ready” We performed operation clear pot with more bread.Nothing like old school cuisine hacks.The sense of camaraderie in some  non-sophistication in the kitchen, is priceless.Back home  l asked myself,” Did l not also  literally,break bread with Sister?”

• This article was originally published in the AIDEM
• https://theaidem.com/breaking-bread-with-a-nun/

Smitha Janet Nilgiris is a Poet and an Academican