Fighting for Christ the Lord ... The New Preface to The Killing of an Author

New Preface (October 2014) [Book is also now a paperback on Createspace.]
 
Recently, thanks to a chance meeting with a childhood friend, I understood why I had really written The Killing of an Author.


As a boy of 11--at an age when American boys are usually playing with their Lego collections, and Indian children of my social class, then, were playing rubber-ball cricket or throwing stones at cashew and mango trees--I enlisted in the Army of Christ. And, as an enlisted serviceman, I ultimately ended up doing a lot of fighting ... though not for Christ.

To begin at the beginning: In a country that has 43 Hindus for every Christian, I was born, in Bangalore, to Roman Catholic parents.  Moving to my parents’ home town, Mangalore (which sometimes refers to itself as “the Rome of the East”), at age 6, I grew up a devout Catholic, brainwashed into believing that martyrdom was the only guaranteed path to sainthood and immortality.
Attaining sainthood, I realized, was very hard work: like studying for the most difficult exam you could ever imagine, but studying, not just for a few years, but for all your miserable, self-flagellating life, and being better at it than most others. 

However, there was one shortcut to sainthood (a shortcut that appealed to my lazy self): martyrdom. The deal was this: All you had to do was offer your neck, at the right time, for Christ the Lord (or Mary, his mother; no, Joseph was not good enough). And no matter how sinful your life had been until that moment, if you recognized the error of your ways just minutes before your beheading or deep-frying (or whichever inventive and kinky method your persecutors used), and so long as you had mentally repented your past sins, and so long as you were clearly sacrificing your life for the True Faith, you were guaranteed martyrdom—which, in effect, also ensured sainthood.

However, just to be sure, and just to strengthen my spiritual resume (which would be examined by the Pope, as well as by Saint Peter, before I was granted sainthood), I joined the Sodality of Our Lady, a Catholic youth organization whose anthem was this martial song:

An army of youth
Flying the standards of truth
We’re fighting for Christ the Lord!
Heads lifted high
Catholic Action our cry
And the Cross Our Only Sword!

....Mary’s Son
Till the World is Won
We Have Pledged You Our Loyal Word .... etc. etc.

The Cross Our Only Sword! Winning the world for Christ!  So, at the age of 11 or 12, I had been brainwashed into becoming a sword-wielding crusader, for I had now been told that it was not enough to follow Christ; one had to fight for Him. 

And, though, as a mere first year high school student, I outperformed college seniors to win first prize in the Sodality’s Religious Quiz (it helped that I had been coached by Father Matthew Lewis, the Rector, who came from a non-upperclass family, like me, and probably had some sympathy for a fellow prole), there followed, four years later, a stunning reversal.

It was a combination of things: that Catholic theology couldn’t explain erections or pubic hair, and that I read a book by Bertrand Russell, that helped me overcome my Catholic brainwashing at the age of 16—at first, hesitantly, and with finality and confidence by the age of 19. At that time, I did not realize that history would repeat itself—that I would end up wasting (?) twenty years of my life as a crusader for different Cause: a crusader for justice and truth.

Kindle:  http://amzn.to/nc07dD
Itunes: http://bit.ly/qWYPOI
Nook: http://bit.ly/pk0dzB
Google Play: http://bit.ly/1oX5jsN
Kobo: http://bit.ly/HAh8PM
Smashwords: http://bit.ly/g2GRMl
Lulu:  http://bit.ly/10kGJIH
Sony: http://bit.ly/T0Jc6c
Amazon Kindle UK: http://amzn.to/iUbcHw
Createspace paperbacks: http://bit.ly/1o9LVZq
 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The India Abroad and other reviews of "The Revised Kama Sutra""

Image
Like R. K. Narayan, who wrote in "My Days" that if he could have told the story of his novel "The Guide" in a few sentences, he wouldn't have taken 90,000 words to do it, I find myself at a loss to answer a question such as, "What is your novel about?"--when the question is put to me by a new acquaintance regarding my novel "The Revised Kama Sutra." I wish to reply: "Almost anything and everything you can think of!" Or: "It would be easier to tell you what it is NOT about." (Or, to the equally difficult question: "What do you write about?": "The sex life of mosquitoes." "The love lives of Chlamydomonas.") Anyway, on a recent trip to the U.S., I uncovered a few of my old reviews, and one of these was this review of "The Revised Kama Sutra" by Shivaji Sengupta in "India Abroad," New York., and think it is one of the most intelligent and well-phrased answers to this questio...
Read more

Sample Sunday Excerpt from THE REVISED KAMA SUTRA

Image
THE REVISED KAMA SUTRA has been published in 10 countries and was called "very funny" by Kurt Vonnegut. It is a big book, and many of the most energetic and exuberant passages occur after the first 50 to 70 pages. In this passage, Vijay, the protagonist, is around 16 years old and has just made his first (unsuccessful) attempt to lose his cherry with a hooker: Chapter 10 How to Succeed -o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o- The confession had taken place on the very evening of the afternoon in which I had failed to unburden myself of my cherry. Heavy-handed Catholicism had captured and nailed down my sinning frame with Inquisitional power; within an hour, I had rushed to Jeppoo Church, a Portuguese-style structure coated with dark green moss and peeling yellow paint. Choosing the oldest and, I hoped, the deafest priest in this saint-rich church, I had confessed, shyly and mumblingly, my inept sin. It was 1969, the year Neil Arm...
Read more

The Strange World of an Indian Bestselling Author

From The Killing of an Author, published in paper and on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Nook, etc. Selected passages from one of the book's most important chapters. The trouble with any excerpt in a blog is that, I have to restrict the language here, and also that no excerpt can really convey the power of the book as the book itself (particularly later chapters such as "The Taboos" and "The System and the Killing of Subversive Authors"). An Author Is Born The Strange World of A Bestselling Indian Author Finally the book ["The Revised Kama Sutra: A Novel"] was finished, and it included a strong, in-your-face Prologue, a political manifesto on behalf of invisible Third World writers, a manifesto demanding equal freedom and incorporating The Invisible Man Press: “It is true that I, the author, have registered a publishing company in the United States called the Invisible Man Press because I felt that it was time for us Indians (incl...
Read more