Rosaries
A boy grows up with rosaries
Reciting the rosary was a big part of our family ritual. Everyone prayed the rosary in my home. The rosary has been central to our lives since I was a toddler. Living with a rosary was ingrained in my DNA in a die-hard Catholic family. Everyone owned a rosary and loving protected it as if your life depended on it. It was a divine asset.
I slept with a rosary under my pillow. It was that sacred symbol of protection.
In 2022, you may wonder what this rosary ritual was about. There is a vast Wikipedia article on rosary that you can read if you want to know more.
Reciting the rosary was a must before dinner and a family routine. At 7.30 pm, the family radio was switched off. Kadayamma, my grandmother, laid a mat in the middle of the family’s living room. Looking at the statues of Jesus and his mother, Mary hung height on the wall, and everyone knelt on the mat and prayed. Five decades of the rosary were followed by the litany to Mary. The whole thing took about half an hour. Nobody ate until this important ritual was completed. No rosary, no dinner.
Kids were allowed to sit down on the mat while adults kept kneeling. That was small mercy for a kid like me. A decade or so earlier, in my parents’ generation, when they were children, the rosary had consisted for fifteen decades. It was a time-consuming routine, not only for kids but even for adults back then.
I was bored with this repetitive routine that took time away from my playtime. The kid in me could not comprehend why God wanted its subjects to repeat the same prayer numerous times. Could not the almighty God hear it once and replay it as many times as he wished?
When I turned six, I could read reasonably well. With that, I was responsible for reciting the litany on my own. The litany contained tongue-twisting words that most kids could not understand. Despite that, I loved being able to recite the litany among the adults. I was very proud of what I had achieved.
I got my first rosary when I turned seven — it was a gift from my godfather, on an essential milestone in the Catholic faith. The rosary beads were white. I loved my new gift. From then onwards, I used it to recite the rosary with the family. I left it under my pillow to sleep. I took it in my pocket for Sunday masses. My new rosary quickly became the ultra symbol of my Catholic faith.
When my younger brother turned one, there was a small ceremony. He was placed in the middle of the house on a mat. Varieties of food, fruits, a rosary, and a book were placed on the mat. As a baby, everyone watched what he would pick to predict his future. Rosary was as important as education and food. By the way, he picked a book and eventually became a scholar and academic.
Rosary recitals came with an occasional comical incident. One night, when the whole family was kneeling and praying, my father’s sarong came off his waist and fell to his knees. It was a hilarious scene. I burst out giggling. Seeing my reaction, my sister started giggling with me. Father quickly recovered and covered himself, pulling the sarong up. Despite her best efforts, my mother could not hide her grin. My grandmother pretended that nothing had happened. After a few minutes of giggling, my sister and I settled down and continued our rosary.
Whenever I visited our relatives and stayed over, I took part in their evening rosary rituals. It was a must in our extended families before dinner. The day was only complete with the family getting together for a rosary.
The first decade of the rosary was led by my father, second by my mother, third by my grandmother, and then by the kids. Family seniority played out in the order of the recital.
The rosary played a big part in the Sunday services in our church. The rosary was said aloud before the Sunday mass. The protagonist was none other than the chief layman of the church, my grandmother’s cousin, who lived across from our home. He was so loud that the whole church could hear his voice in the days before the microphones became commonplace. He must have been faithful to his God and had nothing to do with children. He never smiled at me despite living across our home.
Many years later, I was in a boarding school run by Christian brothers. In the adjoining building were retired Christian brothers. Among them was Bro. Luke. His favourite pastime in retirement was walking around the compound and giving away rosaries to children. He would grab a rosary from his robe pocket and gift it to kids. That was Bro. Luke’s way of flocking young children to his God. But he had a disability in his old age, trouble remembering faces.
Knowing Bro Luke’s weakness, I took many rosaries from him, sometimes two a day. Then, all I had to do was go near him and say, “God Bless”. Overjoyed, imagining that he was multiplying God’s flock, a colourful rosary would immediately come et. But he’d forget who that boy was in a minute.
When I left the boarding, I had a massive collection of rosaries, perhaps around twenty, all thanks to Bro Luke’s generosity. Some of his rosaries were luminous, shining in the night in darkness, a marvel for young boys like me. My collection of rosaries was precious, and I protected them in a box until I left Sri Lanka a few years later.
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