TEN DAYS TO JESUS

YOU'LL SEE JESUS IN TEN DAYS, I promise you," said the boy-man, fixing his gaze on mine.

- NITIN CHAUDHARY

I noticed him carefully. He looked like Jesus himself—long hair brushing his shoulders, a fine moustache crowning his lip. It seemed he had modelled himself on a portrait of Christ.

“He died for us!” he had proclaimed earlier, voice rising with conviction. Beside him stood another boy, silent and observant, watching my face for signs—of interest, of resistance, of anything. It was during one of my habitual walks around the lake that I first met them—my head bowed, eyes fixed on the path—so lost in thought I didn’t notice them until the older one stopped me. He asked how I was. I offered a string of polite, hollow phrases, those you learn when you're new, foreign, and unsure. They had fishing rods slung across their backs and were headed to the lake.

“Do you believe in Jesus?” the older one asked suddenly.

I blinked. What made a good answer? “I’m a Hindu,” I said, surprised at how quickly the words assembled themselves.

“Oh,” he said, “isn’t Jesus considered one of the apostles in Hinduism?”

“Perhaps,” I said. I wasn’t sure.