Doses of love and compassion

Christmas is here again. The season of Christmas trees, buntings, bells, cakes, wine, cookies, mistletoe, and the cuddly Santa Claus. And, of course, a time when Christmas carols — songs that reminisce the heavenly music sung by angels announcing the birth of Christ —- fill the air. The Mount Carmel College recently celebrated Christmas too but in a different light.

   There were all the trappings of Christmas — the X’mas trees, carols, Santa Claus and of course sweets and cakes. But the theatre troupe of the Mount Carmel College chose to touch upon and explore the theory of the presence of a fourth king among the kings who had visited Jesus when he was born. “Plays and songs woven around the nativity is quite common. But we thought we’d focus on the fourth king who also began his journey to greet Jesus when he was born but took 33 years to actually meet Jesus,” explained Lizzy Panghat of the English Department.

 While the three kings chose to welcome the Messiah with materialistic pleasures such as gold, francense and murr, the fourth king had brought a necklace strung from ruby and carried a bag of gold coins to gift to the baby.
The play, was indeed the highlight of the celebrations.
The scene opened with three kings who embark on a journey to greet the baby Jesus and the story went on.

The idea of such a play, says Lizzy is to convey to the people that in these times of symbolic celebrations, the true spirit of Christmas lies in small gestures of love and kindness.
Popular carols were sung in Kannada, English and Tamil by the College choir. The children of Little Angels Orphanage too sang and danced.