All Dressed Up
and Nowhere to Go

Our intended destination this Sunday was St. Mark’s Church. After a short auto rickshaw ride we arrived at the walled compound of St. Mark’s at 10:05 AM. The service was scheduled to begin at 10:30 am, so we felt that we would be able to socialize a bit before the service. As we approached the church building we put our nametags on and opened ourselves to discovery. We immediately discovered two things. First, St. Mark’s is not a Catholic church, but an Anglican church. We have no experience with Anglican rituals or rites so we looked forward to the forthcoming enlightenment. The second and more important fact we discovered was that there was no 10:30 service. Despite signage confirming its Anglican roots and Sunday service schedule, we had to accept the situation that we were two Unitarian Universalists all dressed on Sunday with nowhere to go.

A bit confused on how to adjust our Sunday worship schedule, we were delivered from this worship conundrum by William. We met William, a native Bangalorean Roman Catholic, inside St. Mark’s compound. We were confused by his presence on the grounds of this Anglican church, but William offered without pause that we should attend the 11:00 service at St. Mary’s Basilica with him and we accepted. William assured us of his accurate knowledge of service schedule at St. Mary’s with a confidence not found in the communicants of St. Mark’s.

As we walked, William shared bits of his life. He had been a cook for 25 years. He had been out of work, however, for two months due to a union strike regarding working hours being raised to 9 hours/day and pay remaining the same. Today was his daughter’s 15th birthday and he had no money for a present for her. He shared his remembrances that Bangalore once had only a handful of cars plying the tree-canopied roads. Transportation for the masses was provided by human powered three-wheeled pedicabs. The din of bus engines drowned out some of what William said as we walked up Center Street, but we caught the intent of most of his conversation.

We arrived to see a throng of people congregating in front of St. Mary’s. The church is an impressive building. Its tall spire evokes a time of 100 years ago when it was built and dominated the skyline as well as people’s imagination of the power of western religion.

We found an interesting ritual being conducted at an elevated statue of Mary in a covered area to the right of the church. People were gathered in a slow moving mob to reach the railing erected in front of the statue. Flower offerings were carried. A church attendant would take the flower strands and place them on the statue’s base. People would then pause before the statue, offer puja (Hindu for worship) and depart. We had seen similar ritual rites of worship at the Hindu temples we visited. We are indeed all God’s children regardless of creed.

We were becoming anxious to find a place inside the church before the start of service. Our scheduling mishap at St. Mark’s would now be absolved at St. Mary’s. We voiced our intentions to William to find seats inside. He then paused to add one more discovery to our day. The service was in Tamil, not English. We opted to play hooky from Sunday service.

We spent the rest of the morning with William visiting Russel Market and viewing other churches and temples in the area. When we departed, Jay gave William 50 rupees for his daughter’s birthday and Helen contributed a pretty bracelet to the gift list. Some Sundays' worship rituals are nothing more than the exchange of friendship and priceless memories. Amen.