At the Pime Theater in Milan on April 21st, Filippo Tampieri brings to the stage the extraordinary meetings of Father Luigi Pinos, a missionary in Bangladesh for more than 50 years
“Sewing stories, weaving relationships” is the title of the PIME Center’s annual campaign, dedicated to Bangladesh. But perhaps it is also the phrase that best summarizes the story of Father Luigi Pinos, who dedicated 52 years of his life to this great Asian country and its people, until his death in 2001. His figure will live on again at the Pime Theater in Milan (via Moses Bianchi 94) Sunday 21 April at 5pm thanks to “Il mercato delle stelle”, a show written and performed by Filippo Tampieri which offers the stage reading of some of the missionary’s most beautiful letters, taken from the book of the same name he published in 2000 for the Emi publishing house.
«The thing that struck me most about Father Pinos – says Tampieri, on stage with two other actors and accompanied by violinist Cristiana Franco – is his ability to meet and talk about people. You can see how he lived for them, without ever putting himself at the center.” From the show we propose a page, in which Father Pinos tells the bitter story of the young Dipali.
One day I received a love letter. Don’t misunderstand. The letter was for me, but the love was for another person. It was Dipali (“Bright”) who wrote to tell me that she wanted to marry a boy from a different caste. Here it is unheard of for a girl to talk about her marriage: even worse is this idea of marrying outside one’s caste.
She was 15 or 16 years old and the eldest of ten children, the daughter of a capable and wealthy Bengali (theirs was one of the very rare brick houses in the whole area). The boy that Dipali wanted to marry was called Tommaso, he was young and educated, he also had land, but he lived very far away and, above all, he was an aborigine santal.
So how could it happen that a wealthy Bengali girl took it into her head to marry an aborigine santal? Here it is: Dipali studied in the secondary school of the Bonpara mission. One day a handsome young man came to visit his companion and friend santal. After the boy left, Dipali asked her friend who she was. “He is my brother”. “Oh, I heard you had no one in the world.” “Yes, except him, I have no one.” «And who is he with?». “Alone”. «But who does the cooking for him?». “Nobody”. «Who washes his clothes and takes care of the house?». “Nobody”. He didn’t ask anything more and didn’t say anything more. Dipali withdrew into herself, her mind filled with the image of that boy, as beautiful as Krishna and all surrounded by solitude.
That’s how Dipali started sending me her letters. She wrote to me: she would never have done it directly to Tommaso, she was a girl from Asia, only the word of her parents could have legitimized his love for her. She only hoped that I would take her side and help her and she was aching for me to call her so she could talk to me about it.
One day, when I saw her, I called her. She came running. I asked her: “Have you ever spoken to Tommaso?”. “No”. «Has she ever seen you among the others?». “I do not believe”. «But then he doesn’t even know that you exist. And if the marriage takes place, you are not sure that he will love you.” Dipali replied: “I don’t ask him to love me, I ask to marry him only so that he is not alone and so that he has someone to take care of him.” «My poor Dipali, I said, how happy I would be to see you married to Tommaso, but you know, people…». She looked up at her beautiful eyes, her soul shining in her pupils. She said, “That’s why, father, I’m telling you. You talk to my dad and my uncles…”. As she pronounced these names, her voice trembled and she bowed her head. I said, “I’m on your side, Dipali. I will speak, but it will take a great miracle…”. Unfortunately the miracle did not occur.
A few days later, when I met Dipali’s father, I told him about it. As I expected, his face immediately darkened, so I told him not to worry, that Dipali had a lot of common sense and that there was time to think about it. But he had no intention of waiting for her and, two days later, he came to get her daughter to take her home and put her on trial before the adults of her family. They tried to intimidate her by speaking loudly; she defended herself with silence.
Back at the boarding school, some time passed, but the first term brought some unpleasant news: Dipali, who had always been at the top of the class, had bad results. When, in the second quarter, her results worsened, her father came to her and took her home permanently: evidently her daughter had to get some crickets out of her head…
Many months passed and I heard nothing more. Finally, one day, there she was: she seemed to me to have become smaller. «Dipali». «Father, I have decided not to marry Tommaso». I remained speechless: that beautiful flower of love was losing its last petal, in front of me I saw nothing but the bare corolla. The girl headed towards home again, with small and hasty steps. I felt defeated and sad.