This house in one of the villages of Yelagiri close to the YMCA campus drew my attention while going on my morning walk.
It was 7 am in the morning and the only sign of someone inside the ouse was the pair of chapels near the grinding stone. One half of the house is a store house for green leaves used as fodder for the cattle and the other half which is smaller is family's space for their use.
While waiting to see any movement of children or adults in the house, I noticed a woman coming back with a pot of water in her head and another one in her hand. The cock and few hens were moving around the house.
The bamboo mat was the shutter for the door and the straw roof was discontinuous on the back which was patched up with a plastic sheet.
It needs no imagination to guess the economic and social status of the family who lives in this house.
As one of the houses close by had a star hung outside, my thoughts lingered around the manger where Jesus was born.
We create anger scenes and stage nativity plays at this time of Christmas in th hope that it would bring us to meditate on the humble birth of Jesus.
However, I wish, we would take our children, friends and colleagues to participate in the story of people who in live in manger like settings deprived of comforts without which we cannot live.
It is often the Christmas father who is the most visible sight in a manger scene erected in homes and public places telling that we long for gifts during Christmas season!
Father Davies, well respected for his self giving act of donating a kidney to save a stranger, giving his Christmas message at the MOSC medical college last week said, that 'the message of Christmas is that Jesus became small from being God and became a being among humans. We need to journey from being a human being to a being among humans. That is when the story of incarnation of Christmas is made real' !
M.C.Mathew(text and photo)
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