Skip to main content

Winter


The spiders and the roaches beat a retreat
As November moves on to gnarled mists.
They are not like the human beings
And cannot put on layers to suit the season.

Man is the crown of God’s creation
‘cause he can add on layers and beat the season.
His smile can shine through the mist
With a dagger tucked away behind the mask.

Masks and layers make life’s winter warm
And conceal the colour deep down
While we fumble through the mist
Searching for the very same colour.





Labels:

Comments

  1. UppalNovember 17, 2014 at 8:12 PM

    Interesting winter offering!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 17, 2014 at 8:24 PM

      Could be valid in any season with some modification :)

      Delete
  2. UnknownNovember 17, 2014 at 9:39 PM

    Super poem and lovely words. Since you said it is valid for any season, i would prefer rain or sun! Not too fond of cold.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 17, 2014 at 10:16 PM

      I'm also not fond of cold, Shweta. In fact, winters are a pain for me. But the layers that people put on even in the other seasons - they are far more scary.

      Delete
  3. K.A. AcharyaNovember 17, 2014 at 11:45 PM

    Beautiful poem.Man can add layers to beat not only any season but any situation. It is difficult to know the true nature of man.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 18, 2014 at 10:08 AM

      So many layers, masks and chameleon-like colours. Very difficult indeed to know the true nature.

      Delete
  4. AnonymousNovember 18, 2014 at 10:58 AM

    Beautiful lines..

    ReplyDelete
  5. Kokila guptaNovember 18, 2014 at 11:50 AM

    Great symbolism! and the man spent most of his life to gauge beneath the layers and artificial warmth of others forgetting, his own reality in the quest.. yeah liek you n Shweta I too prefer sunshine and may be some blue clouds with silver lining :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 18, 2014 at 1:01 PM

      The masks have been both amusing and frightening. These days I find a few of them become terrifying...

      ... We are the sunshine people :)

      Delete
  6. UnknownNovember 18, 2014 at 12:18 PM

    Nice to read a poem by you sir, so far I have been enjoying the articles. Nice take on winter, unfortunately for me Chennai doesn't offer much change in climate.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 18, 2014 at 1:02 PM

      I write poems very rarely, Athena.

      I know Chennai, like my home state Kerala, doesn't offer much variety by way of temperature.

      Delete
  7. Sunshine-struckNovember 18, 2014 at 2:46 PM

    Searching for the very same colour. Spot on!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 18, 2014 at 5:47 PM

      That's the one of the paradoxes of life I have noticed.

      Delete
  8. i b aroraNovember 18, 2014 at 4:42 PM

    i like the second line

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 18, 2014 at 5:48 PM

      It's poetic, I know. I seem to have borrowed it from somewhere because a similar line is there somewhere in my mind written by some known poet.

      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

India in Modi-Trap

That’s like harnessing a telescope to a Vedic chant and expecting the stars to spin closer. Illustration by Gemini AI A friend forwarded a WhatsApp message written by K Sahadevan, Malayalam writer and social activist. The central theme is a concern for science education and research in India. The writer bemoans the fact that in India science is in a prison conjured up by Narendra Modi. The message shocked me. I hadn’t been aware of many things mentioned therein. Modi is making use of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s Centre for Study and Research in Indology for his nefarious purposes projected as efforts to “preserve and promote classical Indian knowledge systems [IKS]” which include Sanskrit, Ayurveda, Jyotisha (astrology), literature, philosophy, and ancient sciences and technology. The objective is to integrate science with spirituality and cultural values. That’s like harnessing a telescope to a Vedic chant and expecting the stars to spin closer. The IKS curricula have made umpteen r...
8 comments
Read more

Two Women and Their Frustrations

Illustration by Gemini AI Nora and Millie are two unforgettable women in literature. Both are frustrated with their married life, though Nora’s frustration is a late experience. How they deal with their personal situations is worth a deep study. One redeems herself while the other destroys herself as well as her husband. Nora is the protagonist of Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House , and Millie is her counterpart in Terence Rattigan’s play, The Browning Version . [The links take you to the respective text.] Personal frustration leads one to growth into an enlightened selfhood while it embitters the other. Nora’s story is emancipatory and Millie’s is destructive. Nora questions patriarchal oppression and liberates herself from it with equanimity, while Millie is trapped in a meaningless relationship. Since I have summarised these plays in earlier posts, now I’m moving on to a discussion on the enlightening contrasts between these two characters. If you’re interested in the plot ...
12 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more