Having lambasted Jesus the wimp for half-an-hour or so, I listened to Ivan Hrvatin’s defense of the Christian prophet for as much time at least. And I had not a single objection to make. Not a quibble. On the contrary, I was in full agreement with everything he had to say. In fact, I relished every word of his. Ivan spoke of Jesus the yogi with understanding and passion. He spoke of Jesus as a man to my liking. As a man I could follow, too. Oh, how I hugged Ivan! How I loved him! A farmer and a fireman, Ivan spoke with conviction and devotion entirely my own. The only objection I can still make is that Ivan is not a priest. Or a bishop. Or a cardinal. Or the fucking pope. All of whom should know Jesus the yogi as Ivan does.

Addendum (February 9, 2025)

Gosh, I love this piece! Each and every time I come across it, I can feel the warmth of evenings long past. Sadly, Ivan Hrvatin is no longer with us. Born in 1957, he passed away in 2023. Amazingly, he was only sixty-seven years of age at the time. But my memory of him is as fresh as fresh can be, which is perhaps why it has taken me a couple of years to come up with an addendum such as this one. Between 2003 and 2009 he appears in more than twenty of my pieces of writing. In that period, we regularly met at Klaudio Ivašić’s café on the lower square in Motovun, where many locals would spend their evenings back then. Klaudio and his wife Leila kicked me out of the café around 2010 for so-called political reasons, though. It was golf and polo that divided us. Returning to Ivan, it was an enormous joy to spend entire evenings in his company. He had a way with words, and he knew a lot about Istria. At some point in our friendship, he told me that his family came to this peninsula from Bosnia several centuries ago. Their original surname was Kulin, but one of his paternal ancestors not so long ago decided to change it to Hrvatin. Come to think of it, Ivan’s way with words might well originate in the thickly wooded mountain range that is at the core of the Balkans. Whence Jesus the yogi, as well. Ah, if only I could offer such a hypothesis to Ivan himself! Chances are that we could banter about it for hours.