Catholics, Hindus and one atheist living peacefully together? For the most part, sure, particularly the Hindus and the atheist.
In the beginning in Parramatta, I shared a flat with Amarjit, an Indian man in Parramatta’s Little Delhi, officially Harris Park. He was about forty. Apart from pointing out on flatmates.com.au that his apartment was a walk away from the Parramatta CBD, two railway stations, a discount servo and a Woolworth’s supermarket, Amarjit had also listed proximity to a church as a selling point.
He had not exaggerated. The church was directly across the street, the Our Lady of Lebanon Co-Cathedral in the Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Catholic Parish, which as far as I could figure out covered the entirety of Australia. It hadn’t been a deal-clincher for me. Not that I had had any inkling the Maronites would turn out to be serial pests.
Their Co-Cathedral was constructed in brutalist concrete. No surprise, because the Lebanese have long been heavily involved in the concreting and concrete-pumping game in Sydney. The choice for concrete had not been a last resort but due to the fact that they genuinely seem to like concrete. It may be national character trait, I don’t know, but they embrace concrete, so to speak. When the time came for the Maronite Catholics in Oz to dig deep to build their cathedral, it was always going to be built in concrete. For good measure, the cathedral comes with a large double-story, commuter-type car park, also in concrete.
However, I soon observed how churchgoers were reluctant to use this car park. Amarjit told me that they felt it took too long to get their massive four-wheel drives out of the car park at the conclusion of religious services. Instead, he told me, “they are clogging the streets, sir, and are being parked in tenants’ parking on private land without permission, sir, even on front lawns.” This happened not just on Sundays but every time the Maronite Catholic calendar indicated a feast or festival, which was often and often mid-week.
Meanwhile, the top deck of the largely superfluous car park, an expanse of lovely concrete, was put to good use for noisy processions with loads of wailing and loud music and carrying around of not just bizarre but weirdo artifacts, like the four-poster bed dragged along by wailing middle-aged women in historical dress followed by a hooded chap brandishing a six-foot long fake-gold cross. I know, because I saw it all when I went over to complain about the noise after sitting through a couple of these processions trying to read a book in my room. I was lucky to escape a beating. Concreters don’t muck around.
“We been here fifty years, mate”, they snarled, “how long you been here, huh?” Nothing Christian about that, and yes, it has been pointed out to me that I’m probably the only person to have ever laid a noise complaint against a religious procession. Did I really think they would dial down the wailing?
Anyway, the Maronite Catholics weren’t very popular in Little Delhi, I found.
Little Delhi is among Sydney’s oldest suburbs. It abuts Parramatta, which is where Sydney went in search of arable land in the nineteenth century. From there, the search for grazing lands west, beyond the Blue Mountains, began. It’s how come the Great Western Highway starts at Parramatta.
Roughly, north of the Great Western Highway, where Parramatta CBD is, is Indian territory. Indians can be found living on the south side as well, but as close to the Great Western Highway as they can manage. Fewer and fewer Indians are to be found the further south you go. Going west along the Great Western Highway towards Greystanes, you’ll find the Hindu Murugan Temple on the south side on a narrow strip of land in between the M1 freeway and the Greater Western Highway it duplicates until it reaches the Blue Mountains. The temple’s location is probably due to the relative cheapness of the land.
South of the Great Western Highway is where the Lebanese have set up. In recent years, there has been a big influx of Afghans and it is, again roughly, true to say that south of the Great Western Highway is Muslim territory.
The Christian, Maronite Lebanese built their Co-Cathedral in the 1970s on the north side, well before the arrival in big numbers of the Indians.
Amarjit had described himself as “thoroughly secularised” in an effort perhaps to secure my agreement to move in. Anyway, it had never occurred to me to even wonder if he was a practising or non-practising Hindu or Muslim. Then again, it had never occurred to me to wonder if it was wise to set up camp directly opposite a Maronite cathedral.
Secularised though Amarjit claimed to be, he did interrupt my cooking on the first night with a highly anxious “What is this?” He was looking over my shoulder with alarm if not horror at the initial stage of a chili-con-carne. I assured him that what I was frying was turkey mince, not beef mince, but that didn’t cut it. His anxiety did not abate. He even started shaking.
“It’s not me, you know”, he claimed wild-eyed, “I am not caring if beef or turkey or whatever are being cooked every night of the week. I am thoroughly secularised. But I am speaking to my parents on the telephone and they are being very worried about my sharing of the apartment with a Westerner.”
He then rendered a priceless throw-away gesture. “They are ignorant and superstitious people!”, he exclaimed as if in disgust.
Still, the upshot was that meat was a no-go, the alternative being a very, very tense tenancy. I was reduced to smuggling sausage into my bedroom to have with ostensibly vegetarian food.
A short time after I had moved in, the day would begin at 6 a.m. with streamed chanting. I suspected chanting had been suspended while I settled in and had now resumed. Funnily enough, I didn’t mind. Quite liked chanting for some reason.
House rules, cursorily covered when I moved in, were progressively emphasised. The principle was that everything needed to be wiped down after use. Bathroom. Kitchen. Separate pairs of slippers were to be used in the bathroom and the rest of the apartment. Bathroom slippers, when not in use, to be positioned inside the bathroom door, leaning against the wall, toes pointing downward to facilitate draining. Shoes to be stationed inside an area of one square metre upon entry into the apartment. The reader gets the idea. Kitchen sink to be wiped after drawing even a glass of water and so on.
Apart from secularised, Amarjit was also divorced.
