The book club members spent a delightful evening discussing Roland Merullo’s ‘ The Delight Of Being Ordinary “Minakshi Khanna who made the presentation gave a brief outline of the story.. Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama ask Paola Depadova, the first assistant to the Pope (who happens to be the Pope’s cousin) to take them on a little holiday. To escape their responsibilities for a brief while they plan to put on disguises. In this escapade, Paolo`s ex- wife offers to help.
The principal characters, the Pope and the Dalai Lama, don`t take themselves too seriously, crack jokes, laugh a lot.. Every morning Paolo has breakfast with the Pope [ who is from Argentina ]. The Pope reminds Paola “You keep me sane cousin,” he liked to say “Joke with me. Make me laugh. Remind me that I am, in fact, a human being, not a figurehead”
Escaping from the Pope’s palace is the first hurdle. In the basement, the fixed door does not open, with the key at hand. Paola kicks at it. Lo and behold it flies open, and they catch the scent of the nearby Tiber……..they had made it..
Rosa, Paolo’s ex- wife is waiting for them in a Maserati, the car of her boss, to help them make their get-away. And she drives with abandon. As Paolao says : She was a woman who, in the great Italian tradition, believed that the rules of the road, existed only for the purpose of being broken,
They dashed through the craziness of Rome’s traffic and Paolo reflected as he sat in the Maserati and dashed across the historic monuments, that there was still a touch of genius to the people. While Rosa reflected on the Buddha, who she said she saw always seated. He in fact, did a lot of sitting. and said so to the Dalai Lama, who observed : ” The sitting brought him to enlightenment. you would say, to understand God, or may be , to see clearly the true purpose of life “
On day three of their escape, Ann Lisa, Paolo`s daughter, joins them and there is a discussion criticising the Church. Ann Lisa and her fiance have accepted Buddhism. And the Pope in humility explains : I prefer to think, my cousin, not that the young people have failed us, but that we have failed them. They have a nose for hypocrisy even in matters of the Church. ……we go on and on about the poor, meanwhile we dress in gold vestments, lift golden chalices to the sky, and perform our rites in cathedrals that cost millions of Euros to heat and are more splendid than the homes in which the vast majority of the population of the earth will ever set foot..
The adventure lasts five days and the author keeps us absorbed in the various philosophical discussions and daily discoveries of the protagonists and their delight in life. The discussion that followed was quite heated at times, Nalini Tyabji and Subhash Verma got into a detailed discussion on the various aspects of Buddhist and Christian philosophy.
At which point Dr Gautam Vohra disclosed his experience during his days at university in Britain when he was told unequivocally by his two close friends in class that Christ had clearly stated ” No one comes onto the Father except by me. ” In other words if you did not accept Christ, there was no hope for you. Being a Hindu, he was out of the fold. And Dr Vohra explained his confusion at that stage when he was a teenager. being told that to save himself he would need to convert !
He then gave another example when the Archbishop of Canterbury came on a visit to the college. The archbishop had spoken of the different paths to God and how Gautam and others of different faiths had found solace in that. The discussion continued in this manner where Sadhna Kumar, Harry Malik, Alka Bakshi, Mukesh Khanna and Vichitra Sharma raised issues on the writer’s anecdotal style in telling his story. And the serious and sometimes profound issues he raised in the book in an easy, light manner.
