At Opus Dei centre in Mumbai, no one’s afraid of Dan Brown

The St Leo Road centre is the women’s wing of Opus Dei; the Andrews Street bungalow houses the men’s section. The members were equally unremarkable— unless one is determined to be startled by the fact that most seemed to be well-educated professionals. Which is probably why the criticism that Brown invites is offered in measured, polite tones. They think Brown’s story is rubbish, but they say so nicely.

“We don’t whip ourselves,” Maria Mendes, head of the women’s centre, explained somewhat exasperatedly, and added with a smile that “my daily journey from Bandra to Andheri where my office is enough mortification.”

But the group does have some members using the cilice — the spikes are blunted however and wounds are therefore ruled out.

“I tie it around my thigh at times. Just to feel uncomfortable and to understand how much Jesus sacrificed for us,” says a member, an IT professional, who didn’t want to be named.

I A Mariano, an Argentinean with a doctorate in comparative philosophy from Delhi University, heads the men’s centre. Maria and Mariano—like most Opus Dei members—won’t be watching The Da Vinci Code. The book they dismiss as craftsmanship of distortion: every word is an exaggeration, they say.

Brown’s fictional Opus Dei, as almost everyone seems to know, is a secretive, self-flagellating, Catholic group ready to kill to protect the “secret” that threatened the church. At the Mumbai Opus Dei the big secret is this—the airconditioned library at the men’s centre is a refuge from Mumbai’s sweltering summer to some student members.

Both centres—there’s no official interaction between them—have similar programmes. Opus Dei opened in India in 1993 and now has three centres, two in Mumbai and one in Delhi. The centers at any given time have “four to five people” staying and taking care of organisational needs. The directors of the centres have to be celibate.

The centres conduct a monthly retreat, and a weekly talk, mostly on spiritual issues aligned with the group’s philosophy—find God in whatever one does in daily life. Once in three months or so, the private chapel celebrates Mass.

There are some 200 members in Mumbai— students, teachers, businessmen, bankers, IT professionals. Both centres run programmes for students on music and foreign languages. At the men’s centre, the Spanish class is attended by 30 students, while the guitar class at the women’s centre has 15 students.

So, is this a method to find new converts? The answer from both Mariano and Maria is a definite No.

At the men’s centre there is a board, which has among other notices pages downloaded from the Opus Dei website.

But the books lining the shelves have more to do with popular English literature than the works of Josemaria Escriva, the founder of the group. Photos of Escriva and statues of the Virgin Mary are there in almost every room, though.

The next big plan for Opus Dei, India? Nothing intriguing there, either — the writings of Escriva are being translated in Malayalam.

jayanthjacob@expressindia.com