By Jane De Suza –
‘Who’s going to eat my chocolates that I give up for Lent?’ I asked my mother petulantly as a child. I was rather fed up of being told to finish the food off my plate because children were starving in drought-stricken lands somewhere. Were my chocolates going to be secretly whisked off to these children, I wondered.
‘No one,’ Ma replied.
‘Then how’s it going to help anyone if I give them up for Lent?’
The logic I thought was completely flawed, upside down, one of those meaningless rituals which were forced down my throat by a well-meaning mother, along with the hated cod liver oil.
Later that week, after not day-dreaming and kicking the kid in the pew in front’s shoes, I gathered from the Sunday sermon that giving up things was actually a way of washing out the bad habits, cleansing, repenting, sacrificing.
Aha!
I would start the cleansing out and giving up list that very evening, I decided. A gregarious neighbour visited for a cuppa, and settled in comfortably, tucking her legs up, for a lowdown on the neighbourhood gossip – whose wife was pining outside whose window, whose daughter was too pretty for her own good.
I darted her furious looks from under my fringe and scribbled in the diary I carried everywhere:
- Give up noticing only the bad things in other people.
The other ladies around nodded, not really adding to the slander, but clucking their tongues sympathetically. Say something, I whispered to myself, she’s our neighbour. You know her, you’re nice to her. She’s nice. Come on, stand up for her.
- Give up fence-sitting. Take a strong stand against any injustice.
In the middle of the gossip and the piping hot tea, the girl who was too pretty for her own good landed up to get me to go play downstairs. I glared at her too. Why was she too pretty and why was I not? And why was being too pretty not good? Nevertheless, within 5 minutes of Lagori, all was forgotten. Being pretty, I realised, doesn’t make you better at smashing seven tiles. And being able to run like the wind was all that mattered as a child not how finely cut your nose was.
- Give up comparisons. Give up being jealous. I’m a fabulous creation all on my own, just that I’m not perfect and shouldn’t even try to be.
Feeling utterly virtuous and superior, I snuggled up to Ma that night, waving my Lent List in front of her. I told her what I’d observed and how I’d learnt along the way. I felt very smart indeed and very sure Ma would think the world of me and my list.
‘That’s sweet,’ she said. ‘But remember to put yourself in the other’s shoes.’
Shoes? Why was she on about shoes? Was she planning to whisk away my shoes also to those children starving in the drought-hit lands?
Only later that night, after letting it all stew a bit in my head stuffed with stories, seven tiles and other things that little girls dream of, it made sense. I pulled out my diary and scribbled:
- Never judge anyone else. You don’t know why they do the things they do, or say the things they say.
The next morning before I went to school, I pinned that list up on the fridge.
It’s long since faded or flown off, but it’s fluttering around in my mind, and I’ve added a few points since then. I try to live by it, and not just during Lent. It’s a useful list of things to give up, right? Whether you’re seven years old or seventy…
‘All that’s fine,’ said Ma, ‘but you’re still giving up chocolates for Lent.’
Scribbling on the list, I sulked:
5. Give up ever ever EVER trying to understand your parents.’
Jane De Suza is a humour writer, columnist and advertising creative director; and author of the novels, Happily Never After, The Spy who lost her Head and the best selling SuperZero series for children. She is an alumna of Sophia College, Mumbai and XLRI, Jamshedpur.