In Continuum.

Obsession/Possession

Through this organization my family is part of, we got to know other fellow Taiwanese in Singapore. We don't go to their parties or their gatherings anymore, but I think my parents are still in contact with some of them. One of them, Mr. Q, lives on the fourteenth floor of the same block. He is a big man in his mid fifties, and has a daughter who is studying in America right now, a friend of my sister. I remember the numerous dinners that the two families had, and the way Mr. Q would gang up with me when it comes to poking fun at my father. I was merely fourteen or fifteen, and already the line between father and son was blurred.

Mr. Q is a hard-headed man, with half of his hair already turned snowy white. A humorous guy whose strong in his beliefs, and never fails to crash his car into something on the road. Every time my mother notices a new crack or bump in his car downstairs, she would whisper into my ear and say that," It must have been Mr. Q."

My neighbors are all devoted Christians, and all of them have words like "God Bless Our Home" or "Jesus Loves Us", hung outside their front door. My family is the odd one out really, and whenever there is a gathering held next door, the other two households would join each other in prayers and songs. That usually happens on Fridays, and I remember looking at my mother with a quiet understanding with each other, whenever she fetches me home from camp every Friday while we are at the front door. All of them would be on their feet, hand in hand and singing on top of their lungs just how grateful they are to God's blessings and love.

Mr. W and his family is probably the most devoted neighbor I have. You see a whole hill of shoes before their doorstep whenever there is a gathering, and you can imagine what happens when it is the Good Friday or Christmas. The shoes would be reaching halfway to my own doorstep most of the time, and closing the door of my house wouldn't make a difference to the sheer volume of their singing. What goes on behind their doors remains there, and my family never cared or interfered with them, despite being invited over a dozen times. My mother has been skeptical about their religion, though she never doubted the fact that it preaches the good and never the bad, as do most religions.

Somehow, Mr. W and Mr. Q met one day, and they soon became friends. It must have been the tennis courts where Mr. W visits often with his friends, or the swimming pool where Mr. Q takes long and relaxing swims as he enjoys his retirement years. Wherever they met, Mr. W invited Mr. Q over for one of their Christian gatherings one night, and Mr. Q was over during the Chinese New Year holidays to tell us all about it, with much enthusiasm and amusement.

Being a hard-headed man, Mr. Q has a strict set of his own beliefs that no one should care to interfere. His wife promptly gave up on him years before, and part of the reason why his daughter went overseas - he said - was to get away from her father's stubborn personality and constant nagging. But anyway, this is where the funny part begins. What happens when you put a hard-headed free-thinker in a house full of devoted Christians? Mr. Q was there to tell us all about it.

He started with the first impression of the house. It was crowded with fellow Christians from Mr. W's church, and all of them were having drinks (No alcohols, mind you)in the living room, while the children ran around screaming their heads off. Like I mentioned, shoes were piled up in little hills before the doorstep, and Mr. Q had to pick his way carefully through them as he is a very big man.

After the dinner, the crowd gathered around and shifted the sofa aside. Mr. Q was in the middle of it all, being introduced to the crowd by Mr. W with a hand on his shoulder. Mr. Q never really liked crowds of strangers, especially smiling ones. But he swallowed his discomfort and followed suit.

The gathering started with the normal prayers and the normal songs, where different members of the church would take turns to sing a song for the crowd. As the night drew on, the inevitable attention fell back onto Mr. Q as he prayed to God only for the ignorance of the crowd not to have their attention placed back on him. But he was back in the spotlight again, and this time they asked him of his religion and beliefs. He revealed to the crowd that he doesn't have a set of beliefs, and that he is a free-thinker of sorts. That itself sent a shock wave of disbelief through the members at the gathering, and soft murmurs rose up from all around.

Soon enough, Mr. Q found himself in the middle of two rows of people, about seven on each side. All of them had their hands on the shoulders of the person before him or her, and in the middle of it all was Mr. Q. They were trying to exorcise him of demons, as Mr. W later revealed, and there Mr. Q was, standing in the middle of two rows of amateur exorcists, feeling more amused than disturbed. "Demons in me?" he yelled, as he sipped on a cup of hot tea in the living room of my house a few days later. "Look whose talking!"

He was then pulled to a side by Mr. W, and he started on a bunch of preaching about Christianity and religion that never went further than the ear drums of Mr. Q. He heard the man of course, being the nice old man as he is, but listened to nothing that Mr. W was trying to say. He was stubborn, and tried to argue his way out of the awkward situation, as he was being pinned to a corner by obsessive and potentially possessive believers. "Just 10%," Mr. W said. "Just 10% from your salary every month to the church, is that a lot to ask for?"

Mr. Q flew into a rage and said," 10%? I need to save money for my retirement, and I am already paying 20% to the bloody CPF! Do you think I am crazy?" Of course, he later told us that the 'crazy' part was merely added in after he left the house in a hurry, but at least that was when went through his head and not the lips. At first - he said - Mr. W was calmed and was still trying to be nice to Mr. Q, who strongly refused to join his church. But that calm was soon disturbed by a storm of urgency, and he ended up accusing Mr. Q of being stubborn and hopeless. "Guess the exorcism didn't help then" he said, finishing the cup of tea and asked for more.

As much as I respect other religions, I do think that they do go over the top sometimes. You might say that they are trying to be evangelistic, saving the non-believers before the Judgment Day. But seriously, if that person refuses to give in to your beliefs, I guess the least you can do is to respect them because, when you come right down to it, it is all a matter of whether you believe in something or not.

It is okay if you want to ask people to come to your church, but it is ridiculous to say that you have a demon living inside your mind if you refuses to go. Because seriously, in that house that night, the only sane person to me was Mr. Q, who respected their beliefs enough to keep quiet about how ridiculous everything looked to him, than some individuals who claimed the existence of demons inside his mind.

"Some neighbor you have." he later said, and all we could do was smile. When religion becomes an obsession, it soon turns into a sort of possession, and who is the one that needs an exorcism now?