Come November, Immanuel Henry, retired BSNL officer and ‘writer’ of Bibles, will have crossed another milestone. That, at least, is his plan.
He is now more than 80 per cent through copying the Malayalam version of the New Testament by hand. Immanuel was in the news earlier for having painstakingly copied the Old and New Testaments in Tamil by hand.
His manuscripts are exact copies of the printed books - from each and every line to commas and full stops. ‘’The Malayalam New Testament published by the Bible Society of India has 277 pages. I’ve crossed 200,’’ he said, seated at his Jawahar Nagar home.
Tamil being his mother tongue, Malayalam posed some problems, he said in Tamil-laced Malayalam. ‘’But not so much as I feared. When I took up the Tamil versions, I could write up to four-and-a-half pages in a day. Malayalam, I can manage roughly two pages.’’
Immanuel had started his Malayalam project on November 2, 2011, and hopes to complete it on coming November 15. Every day, he gets up at 3 am and works till 6 am, assiduously copying each page as it is with his the cello gripper pen.
‘’Each line has to resemble the original to the punctuation.’’ He is quite particular about that. ‘’I’ve heard that the Malayalam Bible has been copied by a group of people, but not by an individual and not as an exact copy of the original. This is perhaps the first time,’’ he said.
Immanuel had embarked upon his extraordinary Biblical journey in September 2006, when he took up the Tamil Old Testament. After some 300 pages, he had dropped the idea and started on the Tamil New Testament. Later he completed both.
Today, many people approach him for a copy. ‘’That’s tough. You can get a good Bible for ` 400. But taking photostat copies of my copies will cost ` 1,500,’’ he said.
After the New Testament, he plans to take up the Malayalam version of the Old Testament. ‘’That, I believe, I will be able to complete by the middle of 2015,’’ he said. And after that? ‘’The English Bible, of course.’’
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