Skip to main content

Death and new life


Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the soil, it cannot grow into a new plant.  Jesus said that, but it is a very obvious truth. 

The mailbox in the picture is one which was in function until a few years back.  Now it stands like a relic in Fatehpur Beri, South Delhi.  It will gather rust and fall down one day.  Civilisation has killed it already before time will kill it once and for all.  No one will mourn its death any more than anyone will mourn the death of the cassette player or the typewriter.  The new takes the place of the old.  And the old dies.  Naturally. 

Civilisation keeps moving ahead with new technology and better ways of doing things.  Life becomes easier and better.

But
has life really become easier and better?
Is the new life better than the old?

Such questions are silly because their answers are as obvious truths as what Jesus said about the grain of wheat.  Everything has merits and demerits. 

Life goes on.  Changes are as inevitable as death and new birth. 

But
I’m just wondering why we, who keep creating marvels in technology, architecture, medicine...
why we can’t create the marvel of tolerance in place of strife,
cooperation in place of terrorism...

Well
maybe a genetic mutation is awaiting mankind.

Maybe the ape who walks on two legs will die to give birth to a new species.

That's a better hope than awaiting heaven in the hereafter :)

Labels

Labels:

Comments

  1. Datta GhoshSeptember 5, 2014 at 4:05 PM

    we are slowly evolving technically speaking..The Homo Sapiens has become Homo Sapien Sapien. Wonderful post Sir

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 5, 2014 at 8:35 PM

      There's another evolution that we need, Datta: at the consciousness level. A lot of people had imagined it, Bernard Shaw, Nietzsche, Teilhard de Chardin... Evolution is a slow process, I guess.

      Delete
  2. AnonymousSeptember 5, 2014 at 9:35 PM

    Something profound in this

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 6, 2014 at 8:58 AM

      I kept it short in order to prevent scaring readers with too much "profundity" :) Thanks.

      Delete
  3. PurbaSeptember 6, 2014 at 6:27 AM

    We have reached a stage when we are realizing that progress came with a cost. Some us will learn and change and the rest of us will adapt.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 6, 2014 at 8:59 AM

      True, the change has already started with quite many people questioning the prevailing dominant world view.

      Delete
  4. Nima DasSeptember 7, 2014 at 5:01 PM

    The old gives way to the new but always at a cost! Good read.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 8, 2014 at 9:31 AM

      Many civilisations perished when they lost touch with the roots (traditional ways), according to a scholar on the topic, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...
39 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...
16 comments
Read more

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...
30 comments
Read more

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...
47 comments
Read more

Dharma and Destiny

  Illustration by Copilot Designer Unwavering adherence to dharma causes much suffering in the Ramayana . Dharma can mean duty, righteousness, and moral order. There are many characters in the Ramayana who stick to their dharma as best as they can and cause much pain to themselves as well as others. Dasharatha sees it as his duty as a ruler (raja-dharma) to uphold truth and justice and hence has to fulfil the promise he made to Kaikeyi and send Rama into exile in spite of the anguish it causes him and many others. Rama accepts the order following his dharma as an obedient son. Sita follows her dharma as a wife and enters the forest along with her husband. The brotherly dharma of Lakshmana makes him leave his own wife and escort Rama and Sita. It’s all not that simple, however. Which dharma makes Rama suspect Sita’s purity, later in Lanka? Which dharma makes him succumb to a societal expectation instead of upholding his personal integrity, still later in Ayodhya? “You were car...
25 comments
Read more