“Should I forgive her?”

I have questioned this to my mom several times and was never satisfied with her answer.

It was late 2002 and I remember my next little step towards flourishing into the world of curiosity for learning carrying horseplays and naughtiness to the next grade from lower Kindergarten to upper Kindergarten.I have never seen women wearing a long grey tunic, black veil, and scapular with a cross in heart and smile on face all the time. For instance, I imagined what my mom said last night that Lord will send angels in disguise to help needy and they will be very kind. She was called Alfy John Sister.

At the end of the day, I broke my friend’s new pencil in envy and she started crying. Guess what could have happened? An angel turned to the devil? She could have scolded me, she could have punished me, she could have complained to my parents, but all she did was a kiss. Yes, she kissed my forehead and said you are very strong but if you could show that in sports you will be a great sportsman.

Thanks for that magical kiss! She became my favorite, the only person I love, I trust in the school, you know how comfortable I feel in her hands of Compassion and how jealous I feel when she pours her unconditional love into other Children in class.

Once I shoved down my best friend Sheela from stairs for fun, while she was bleeding, I doomed in guilt. I could neither face Sheela nor Sister anymore, I felt very bad and was sad all day. In the evening Sister sat in front of us and said, “ Be kind to one another tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” with a kiss on our forehead and she added, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgive each other, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive!

I was very excited to meet her after summer vacations and tell her how I swam in the river, how I rode on a buffalo, how I flew my kite high, what we played, show my healing wound, my drawings everything that happened in that vacation. I could find her nowhere in School, I waited in front of Nuns hostel for hours for her to take me in her arms, to hug me in love, to see her beautiful smile, to get a magical kiss from her but all in vain. She was transferred to serve another missionary school as there is no one to take care of children, that’s how mom consoled me. With red teary eyes and sorrow face that was for the first time, I asked mom, “Should I forgive her?”

Last night my mother was narrating a tale wearing earphones, with a smartphone in one hand and a book in another. Thanks to the habit of listening to bedtime moral stories and the person who started it, a tall, lanky fellow, who makes us sit on his lap, patting to sleep with tales from Ramayana, Mahabharata and teaching us the power of morality, our great grandfather. Our family has taken this habit so seriously that we exchange bedtime stories and it was my mother’s turn for the day to drop the story in the family WhatsApp group for my cousins. She ended the story saying “Forgive and forget!”. Maybe that’s what Alfy John sister also meant!