Skip to main content

Female Executioner


The executioner swanned along
   the corridors that smelt of perpetual repair,
With the Cheshire cat's grin on her grim lips,

Paused a moment on the way
to cheer the bearded man's music
not knowing it was sad.

And entered where her staff were at work,
Executed the day's scrutiny,
Ordered a hand chopped off here
   and a head there,
before retreating to her air-conditioned comfort zone
with job satisfaction in her religious heart. 
Labels:

Comments

  1. UnknownApril 5, 2013 at 11:31 AM

    Yup !!
    Whoever said religion makes people compassionate !!
    Just today read that a guy was being paralysed by virtue of Sharia law !!
    I never understand justice as described by religious fanatics !!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 5, 2013 at 2:56 PM

      Wasn't religion the biggest business throughout human history?

      Delete
    2. UnknownApril 5, 2013 at 2:59 PM

      Oh yes !! A very succeessful one. Prospering on peoples' insecurities and fears :)

      Delete
  2. mandakolathurApril 5, 2013 at 4:52 PM

    I can't even begin to interpret. No, go even beyond; I would not even know where to begin to interpret. This is the truth, the complete truth and nothing but the truth. So, help me.

    RE

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 6, 2013 at 8:57 PM

      Have you ever come across an Indira Gandhi in Emergency?

      Delete
  3. mandakolathurApril 6, 2013 at 9:31 PM

    I lived through one; indeed, when she lost the election in its aftermath I was at Ground Zero or near abouts, n Kanpur. But, your offering is overhead transmission for me; my bad.

    RE

    ReplyDelete
  4. vanderloostApril 6, 2013 at 10:45 PM

    Whoah!! What imagery!! So clinically executed to perfection!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 7, 2013 at 9:28 AM

      Life teaches us such perfection though rather painfully.

      Delete
  5. Woman'n'BeyondApril 7, 2013 at 11:16 AM

    painfully perfect, searingly indifferent and making huge and expected impact. stunning!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 7, 2013 at 5:23 PM

      Thanks, Meenakshi. By the time I retire I may perfect myself as a poet, it seems. :)

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
18 comments
Read more

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so...
39 comments
Read more

Dine in Eden

If you want to have a typical nonvegetarian Malayali lunch or dinner in a serene village in Kerala, here is the Garden of Eden all set for you at Ramapuram [literally ‘Abode of Rama’] in central Kerala. The place has a temple each for Rama and his three brothers: Lakshmana, Bharata, and Shatrughna. It is believed that Rama meditated in this place during his exile and also that his brothers joined him for a while. Right in the heart of the small town is a Catholic church which is an imposing structure that makes an eloquent assertion of religious identity. Quite close to all these religious places is the Garden of Eden, Eden Thoppu in Malayalam, a toddy shop with a difference. Toddy is palm wine, a mild alcoholic drink collected from palm trees. In my childhood, toddy was really natural; i.e., collected from palm trees including coconut trees which are ubiquitous in Kerala. My next-door neighbours, two brothers who lived in the same house, were toddy-tappers. Toddy was a health...
10 comments
Read more

Dark Fantasy

An old friend of mine was with me in my kitchen when Amazon’s delivery man rang to know the location of my residence. He was the same person who delivered all my cat food subscriptions regularly. “The location shown is confusing,” he explained. “I haven’t ordered anything,” I said having checked my profile on Amazon. He delivered the pack promptly enough and I was curious to see what it was. X, my friend, was in the kitchen cooking the prawns he had brought all the way from Kochi, his own city which reeks of seafoods naturally. “Dark Fantasy,” he mused when he saw the content of the package. Someone had sent me a box of Dark Fantasy cookies. I’m sure there isn’t any person on earth who keeps dark fantasies about me in their (her, as alleged by X) conscious/subconscious/unconscious mind. I wasn’t ever such a charming person at any time in my life. “Dark fantasy,” X said refusing to believe my deprecatory self-assessment though he knew it was quite true. “You never know where ...
10 comments
Read more