Skip to main content

Discovery

Short Fiction
 Sculptor was frustrated. 

He had a theory that every rock contained within it the statue which the artist has only to discover.  Sculpture is the art of dis-covering. 

But the rock on which he was working refused to reveal the statue it contained.  Sculptor looked at his semi-finished statue from left and right, front and back, from all angles possible. 

No, this isn’t what I had seen in the rock. 

Yes, a sudden realisation dawned on him.  I’ve been making a mistake.  I had seen a particular statue in the rock while the rock contained a quite different one.   He took his hammer and chisel again. 

In the place of Sita which he had been trying to carve, now emerged Ravana.  With one face containing all the ten faces. 


Labels:

Comments

  1. AnonymousNovember 2, 2013 at 1:07 PM

    Indeed sometimes changing perspective work wonders..And Sometimes it is necessary to see things with someone else eyes to make things clear

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 2, 2013 at 6:54 PM

      Indeed, Harsha. Sometimes we become slaves of fixed perspectives. I realised it yesterday when there was a problem with a student. This story is the result.

      Delete
  2. Mon.EspritNovember 2, 2013 at 6:29 PM

    Just have one word for it Sir - Brilliant.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 2, 2013 at 6:55 PM

      Thank you, Abhra. You always make me happier than I deserve.

      Delete
  3. KhushbooNovember 2, 2013 at 7:38 PM

    An eye opener. Sometimes we have to let go of things and let them work on their own.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousNovember 2, 2013 at 8:05 PM

    Tom excellent moralistic story. There is a Ravana in everyone

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 2, 2013 at 8:16 PM

      And that Ravana becomes too active at times creating havoc for others...

      Thank you.

      Delete
  5. Anita SabatNovember 2, 2013 at 9:32 PM

    Nice one, Sir! :)
    Great that the rock told its story and the sculptor understood...
    Wish we all are as perceptive as the Sculptor while carving our sculptures in Life! :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 3, 2013 at 9:35 AM

      If your wish came true, the world would be paradise, Anita.

      Delete
  6. TriveniNovember 3, 2013 at 7:55 AM

    What a great writing..few words said and conquered all.
    Sonal

    ReplyDelete
  7. UnknownNovember 3, 2013 at 11:56 AM

    Breaking Stereotypes - Brilliant!

    ReplyDelete
  8. AmitAagNovember 3, 2013 at 12:55 PM

    Absolutely wonderful!

    ReplyDelete
  9. jahidNovember 5, 2013 at 12:52 AM

    Trial and error is actually a good approach :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 5, 2013 at 9:50 AM

      In this case, it was more than a trial and error, however.

      Delete
  10. AnonymousNovember 5, 2013 at 1:52 AM

    [ Smiles ] It's good to know that the artist had a change of perspective!

    ReplyDelete
  11. AnonymousNovember 6, 2013 at 10:51 AM

    A brilliant post, I could even conclude two more things out of it - The once who were Ram or perhaps Sita, as time passes may turn Ravan....Or people you thought were like Ram and Sita were actually Ravan in making which you failed to notice..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 6, 2013 at 9:54 PM

      Both are natural and valid possibilities... This, being a parable of sorts, is amenable to a lot of interpretations. What about the process of artistic creation, for example?

      Delete
  12. UnknownNovember 15, 2013 at 6:24 PM

    Absolutely beautiful. I guess every artist feels that way at one point or the other. :)

    ReplyDelete

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

Being Christian in BJP’s India

A moment of triumph for India’s women’s cricket team turned unexpectedly into a controversy about religious faith and expression, thanks to some right-wing footsloggers. After her stellar performance in the semi-final of the Wormen’s World Cup (2025), Jemimah Rodrigues thanked Jesus for her achievement. “Jesus fought for me,” she said quoting the Bible: “Stand still and God will fight for you” [1 Samuel 12:16]. Some BJP leaders and their mindless followers took strong exception to that and roiled the religious fervour of the bourgeoning right wing with acerbic remarks. If Ms Rodrigues were a Hindu, she would have thanked her deity: Ram or Hanuman or whoever. Since she is a Christian, she thanked Jesus. What’s wrong in that? If she was a nonbeliever like me, God wouldn’t have topped the list of her benefactors. Religion is a talisman for a lot of people. There’s nothing wrong in imagining that some god sitting in some heaven is taking care of you. In fact, it gives a lot of psychologic...
26 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...
19 comments
Read more

The wisdom of the Mahabharata

Illustration by Gemini AI “Krishna touches my hand. If you can call it a hand, these pinpricks of light that are newly coalescing into the shape of fingers and palm. At his touch something breaks, a chain that was tied to the woman-shape crumpled on the snow below. I am buoyant and expansive and uncontainable – but I always was so, only I never knew it! I am beyond the name and gender and the imprisoning patterns of ego. And yet, for the first time, I’m truly Panchali. I reach with my other hand for Karna – how surprisingly solid his clasp! Above us our palace waits, the only one I’ve ever needed. Its walls are space, its floor is sky, its center everywhere. We rise; the shapes cluster around us in welcome, dissolving and forming and dissolving again like fireflies in a summer evening.” What is quoted above is the final paragraph of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s novel The Palace of Illusions which I reread in the last few days merely because I had time on my hands and this book hap...
12 comments
Read more

Hollow Leaders

A century ago, T S Eliot wrote about the hollowness of his countrymen in a poem titled The Hollow Men . The World War I had led to a lot of disillusionment with the collapse of powerful empires and the savagery of the war itself which unleashed barbaric slaughter. The generation that survived was known as the “Lost Generation.” Before the war, Western civilisation was sustained by certain values and principles given by religion, the Enlightenment, and Victorian morality. The war showed that science and technology, which could improve life, had actually produced machine guns, gas warfare, and mass death. Religion became hollow. People became hollow. “We are the hollow men,” Eliot’s poem began. The civilisation looked sophisticated from outside, but it was empty inside. There is a lot of religion today in the world. My country has allegedly become so religious that it decides what you will eat, wear, which god you will pray to, and even the language for communication. The ultimat...
16 comments
Read more