"God is it fair that for your one and only son thousand other innocent babies have to die?" cries the mother painfully, her voice bitingly cold and sharp. Her son was among the many who have been taken away by King Herod's army.
She had gone off to the fields leaving her one month old son at home. On hearing the terrible news of the king's order to murder all male babies in the kingdom who are one month and younger, she had came rushing back, only to find a blood soaked baby cloth.
'Did we even ask you to send your only begotten son as our Savior?' she asks God bitterly. 'To protect one son of yours thousands innocent souls are slain, God! How is that justified? Man can only bear, but to a certain limit' sobs the mother.
Clutching the blood soaked cloth to her bosom she continues to cry most desperately. As she cried and looked out towards the pasture behind her house, her expression suddenly changes.
She runs out of the house, towards the pasture, ran past the sheep, knelt down beside the bush, and exclaimed 'Oh! My son! You are alive! God have saved you after all"
She lifted up the small body gently and smiles up to heaven with tears in her eyes. She asks God to forgive her for the terrible words she had uttered in a moment of weakness and despair.
She cuddles the body lovingly and rocked it to and fro. She prays again, but this time her prayers were addressed to Madonna, virgin mother of Jesus.
"Madonna, you know how i feel don't you?" she began, "for you too lost your son Jesus on the cross, you will understand how I feel".
She silently began to rant on, on the extent of misery a mother feels when the security of her baby is threatened. But now, she says to Madonna, that she is happy and content as she got her baby back.
The mother continues in an odd cheerfulness “You know Madonna, now my son is so secure here among the sheep that he will not be threaten by Herod's man ever again”, “see Madonna” she says “he is so similar to the sheep here that no one will be able to distinguish him from a sheep”.
The mother then walks off towards the fading daylight still clutching the young lamb tightly to her bosom.
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Plays have been enacted, stories have been told on the passion of Christ. But the above play talks of the passion of man, how man has learned to survive and adapt to life despite unpleasant conditions.
The play is an example of how man adapt to most terrible situations- by insanity. The poor woman, unable to accept her son's death becomes mad and took to the lamb as a replacement.
Not every person reacts to suffering the same away. There are instances where people simply choose to ignore it.
Those who are 'unfeeling' as the society terms them turns suffering into a source of gossip. The core idea of a person's suffering and the terrible scenarios are ignored, choosing to gossip about it then be pulled into it.
Some people simply don’t know why dreadful things are happening. They fail to understand why certain things are happening to them. They are the victims of situations.
Suffering has been weaved into very fabric of life from the time Eve ate the forbidden apple in the Garden of Eden.
Humanity will still continue to suffer, but humanity will still find ways to cope with suffering. Hence we call it ‘Passion of man’.
Adapted from the Bible
Courtesy to Ma'am Aishwarya of Asan Memorial School.
The play was originally enacted at theUniversity of Madras.
