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

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 4

The footpath between Park Avenue and Subhash Bose Park The Park Avenue in Ernakulam is flanked by gigantic rain trees with their branches arching over the road like a cathedral of green. They were not so domineering four decades ago when I used to walk beneath their growing canopies. The Park Avenue with its charming, enormous trees has a history too. King Rama Varma of Kochi ordered trees to be planted on either side of the road and make it look like a European avenue. He also developed a park beside it. The park was named after him, though today it is divided into two parts, with one part named after Subhash Chandra Bose and the other after Indira Gandhi. We can never say how long Indira Gandhi’s name will remain there. Even Sardar Patel, whom the right wing apparently admires, was ousted from the world’s biggest cricket stadium which was renamed Narendra Modi Stadium by Narendra Modi.   Renaming places and roads and institutions is one of the favourite pastimes of the pres...
11 comments
Read more

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 1

Inside St Francis Church, Fort Kochi Moraes Zogoiby (Moor), the narrator-protagonist of Salman Rushdie’s iconic novel The Moor’s Last Sigh , carries in his genes a richly variegated lineage. His mother, Aurora da Gama, belongs to the da Gama family of Kochi, who claim descent from none less than Vasco da Gama, the historical Portuguese Catholic explorer. Abraham Zogoiby, his father, is a Jew whose family originally belonged to Spain from where they were expelled by the Catholic Inquisition. Kochi welcomed all the Jews who arrived there in 1492 from Spain. Vasco da Gama landed on the Malabar coast of Kerala in 1498. Today’s Fort Kochi carries the history of all those arrivals and subsequent mingling of history and miscegenation of races. Kochi’s history is intertwined with that of the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British, the Arbas, the Jews, and the Chinese. No culture is a sacrosanct monolith that can remain untouched by other cultures that keep coming in from all over the world. ...
7 comments
Read more

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let...
36 comments
Read more

Good Life

I introduced A C Grayling’s book, The God Argument , in two earlier posts.   This post presents the professor’s views on good life.   Grayling posits seven characteristics of a good life.   The first characteristic is that a good life is a meaningful one.   Meaning is “a set of values and their associated goals that give a life its shape and direction.”   Having children to look after or achieving success in one’s profession or any other very ordinary goal can make life meaningful.   But Grayling says quoting Oscar Wilde that everyone’s map of the world should have a Utopia on it.   That is, everyone should dream of a better world and strive to materialise that dream, if life is to be truly meaningful.   Ability to form relationships with other people is the second characteristic.   Intimacy with at least one other person is an important feature of a meaningful life.   “Good relationships make better people,” says G...
21 comments
Read more