The Gospel According To The Transparent Ironist

Now that it is Sunday, the chapel clock strikes fifteen to nine and it is time for a Cambridge story. Not to worry, it will be over just in time for high tea and the Ashes at Lord's.

A fresh graduate from the mediaeval (British spelling, not American) university of Cambridge, with a diploma in Social Anthropology, breathing the air of the so-called heady idealism of youth, once voyaged into the dark hinterlands of Africa to study a distant tribe called the Bakarazande. He spent five years in their midst in the course of which he learnt a couple of the most amazing beliefs, tricks, and practices that had hitherto remained unknown to the civilising gaze of the Western Man. He became so intimate with the tribals that after a while it was quite impossible for them to distinguish between him and them : not only did he speak their dialects consummately, he often participated in their festivals and eagerly celebrated their religious ceremonies.

Indeed, one night at the camp-fire the Old Man of the tribe stood up before everyone and spoke thus to the congregration, in a voice quivering with emotion : 'This White Eye has now become one of us. I think we should formally accept him into our community through a great celebration this Spring when the rains flow down to us from the bounties of the Great Spirit.'

The next morning, however, the Cambridge graduate was nowhere to be seen. The tribals scoured the brown hills and the barren plains for miles around but not a trace of him remained anywhere. In the meantime, the graduate moved on to another tribe called the Yarobu who lived five hundred miles up the river Zarokho, settled down with them, learnt a handful of their dialects, and mingled into their midst so intimately that they could hardly think of him as someone from another place. One evening in the orange autumn, when the yellow leaves were falling thick in the exhausted late summer wind, the village chief came up to him and offered his daughter's hand(s) in marriage to him. Flummoxed by the offer, he asked the chief what that word 'marriage' meant in the local dialect, and received the reply that the entire tribe would join in a public celebration before the mists of winter set in.

The next morning, the Cambridge graduate was (by now, predictably) nowhere to be seen. He moved yet higher up this time and arrived at the fearsome gorge of the river Mikimakoo at sunset. There he sat down upon a rock and began to contemplate, somewhat in the style of an armchair anthropologist cosily ensconced in Neville's Court, Trinity.

'I have been trained as a social anthropologist by my stiff upper-lipped peers in Cambridge, many of whom have never ventured one inch outside their Junior Parlours. Everytime I go to study to a tribe I must not be a mere observer, I must also be a participator. That is why I learn their languaes so thoroughly, speak the same way that they do, listen to their stories, eat their food, sing their songs, laugh with them (though some of their jokes are rather sick), and cry with them (though some of their women are a bit too sentimental). And yet, what prevents me from actually becoming one of them? Why can't I, to use the currently fashionable Britishism, go native?'

The graduate received so answer to this question of cosmic proportions (if not implications) that sunset. The next morning, however, he arrived at the outskirts of a small village in the valley of the Sukitukamikaloo where he saw two little girls carrying a heavy load on their arched backs. He went up to them and asked them who they were and where they were going to.

'We are going to receive education', they said.

'But why are you carrying a sack on your backs?'

'Those are our text-books.'

'Why don't you just throw them away to the winds and run to the fields and play the whole day long?'

'Oh, we dare not do that! Our parents will punish us severely for that. The other night my sister Zooniya wanted to watch Simpsons but my father was enraged that she was not doing her sums, and a whack! was what she received.'

This rather surreal (and admittedly Americanised) conversation in an African village had a profound impact on the graduate's mind, and he slowly walked away from them pondering over the reply that he had heard. That evening, he entered a ramshackle pub, The African Grape, to replenish his stock of white wine when he overheard a young teary-eyed woman complaining to an old woman who had lots of grey hair on a head that nodded so vigorously that the graduate feared it might fall off any moment.

'I want to get married to Hirantouroo from across the distant hills of Kolimazoo, but he belongs to a different tribe than ours. Now my parents are compelling me to marry some stranger I have never even seen.'

'But why can't you just throw your parents to the winds and run away to Hirantouroo?'

'Well, I have thought of doing that at times but I really can't. I feel this strange bond with my parents.'

'You stupid woman! Can't you see that this bond you speak of is simply genetic? All women feel this biological connection with their parents, but do you seriously want to remain enslaved to your genes all your life? Consider men, on the other hand. The family is entirely dispensable and a prodigal waste of time for men (that is, those men, if any of such exist [Editor's note : The Transparent Ironist is an incurable optimist], who have not already been brainwashed by the family), and how rightly so! Unless we women learn to give up the family we shall never become free from the primordial tyranny of men.'

'Is that the reason why in the parables of our sacred scriptures only sons are allowed to be prodigal?'

'Precisely so! A daughter who dared to be prodigal (God forbid!) would at once be reformed within two days, normalised within three, civilised within four, married off within five, and institutionalised within six.'

The Cambridge graduate filled up his sack with three bottles of vintage white wine and slowly moved out from the pub. The words of the old woman were reverberating in his ears as he watched the sun setting over the ancient Banalooka hills. There were layers upon layers of grey clouds that had accumulated over the horizon, the women were busy gathering their half-dried clothes, the children were playing a raucous game, and some of the men were trying to light their Marlboros that they had smuggled across the (non-existent) border. The graduate paid no heed to them but started walking towards the hills when suddenly he heard a massive thunderclap in the skies and it began to rain dogs and (their) cats. There was a burst of brilliant light in the foreground and he could see the vague outlines of an old man with his back turned towards him.

'Who are you?'

'I am who I am, and I am who shall be. But then, I can't really give you my true Name.'

'So what do we do?'

'-----------------'

'All right, fair enough. Now what do you want from me?'

'I want you to go forth into the world and spread my lost Gospel!'

'But I cannot. I am a man of unclean lips. I fear that I shall not be able to bear the weight of the task that you have marked me out for. I crumble to the ground in dust and ashes. Please choose someone else from this world and spare me!'

'Go forth! I shall be your guide, your strength, and your comforter until the end of this world.'

'What is this secret Gospel that I shall take forth into the world?'

'Thus it has been said by many sages of yore : the family is a haven of peace, joy, and warmth. But I say unto thee : the family is a sinister instrument invented by men (and subsequently assimilated by women) for punishing children and dominating women. So all ye who live in families, the Lord's Day of Wrath is now at hand : repent and run away from the family as if you had accidentally stepped on a poisonous snake!'

The Cambridge graduate could not speak or see anything for three days on end after this climactic (and admittedly a tad vituperative for his British sensitivities) encounter with the Lord of Judgement who had spoken to him through the clouds of darkness. Finally, on the third morning, however, he began to regain his vision and started walking down from the heights of Mount Gozoonami in the Banalooka hills.But he could not understand how he would go about accomplishing the Herculean task of spreading this Gospel in a world where almost everyone around him seemed --- at worst --- to be attached to their families and --- at best --- to be indifferent towards them.

At the foot of the mountains, however, he saw a tiny girl trying to draw something on the parched earth with a little brown twig. She was drawing rings of concentric circles emerging outwards from a point and touching these circles there were tangents flying off in all possible directions.

'What are these tangents doing here?'

'Well, you know it is a bit hard on me. Give me a break, will you?'

'What is hard on you?'

'I mean what you are doing to me right now. You have deliberately put me in this place so that you can use my replies for your blog, haven't you? I mean, come on. A five year old girl wouldn't even know what a damned tangent is, for Christ's sake! For all your high-talk about men dominating women in their families and all that shit, can't you see that this is what you are doing to me right now? Dominating me by using my imaginary replies for your readers?'

'Hmmmm. But does this mean that whenever I blog I can only speak tangentially?'

The girl picked up her twig from the ground, and made a menacing little circle above her head.

'Oh, well, life sucks anyway. Whateva. I think it's in your best interest to keep out of this. It's a chic(k)-thing, you know?'

'Hey, where are you going up there into the hills? Don't you have family and stuff like that?'

'Hah! Now look who's talking!'

And now it is Sunday again, and the chapel clock strikes fifteen to eleven. Another Cambridge graduate allows himself the luxury of a smile over the very existence of the English language. After all, it is this that has enabled him to disguise his great prejudice so beguilingly in the form of a most fanciful, extremely surreal, and crudely hyperbolic fairy-tale that lost in its labyrinthine mazes his readers are still trying to answer the question : So was this 'really' The Gospel According To The Transparent Ironist? That the Family is a redundant legacy from the barbarism of a feudal age, and that it must now be consigned to the dustbin of history?