Skip to main content

Love that unites


Memories can be miracles.  They can bring about transformations within us.  My recent visit to Kerala was for a reunion of some friends who studied together from 1976 to 1978.  Meeting again 36 years later is a momentous experience.  The boys had become men.  The men are now involved in a wide variety of professions, ranging from today’s most popular profession of converting people from their religions to the least preferred job of fighting for justice.  There were jewellers and chartered accountants in between.  And a schoolteacher like me.  Quite a few priests too.  The spouses and children of those who were not priests added a unique charm to the gathering.

People had cancelled or rescheduled important assignments just to make it to this gathering.  A few travelled all the way from as far away as the USA only for this occasion.  A few had spent a lot of time and money making the necessary arrangements. 

I loved it.  What a meet it was!  So many people from such a wide diversity of occupations and outlooks.  And yet we all found it delightful.  An unforgettable experience that lasted almost the whole day.

As I, along with my wife, got a free lift all the way to my home (55 km from Ernakulam where the meet took place) after the gathering (thanks to an alumnus who was travelling to the same place), a thought kept springing in my mind.  If such a wide variety of people can be reunited so joyfully merely because of the fact that some of them had studied together in their adolescence, why can’t India be just one country living happily together in spite of all the variety? 

Why should India be a people of one religion?

Yes, interestingly, there was one alumnus of ours who boasted about his successful religious conversions.  I found him rather comical.  Not villainous, thank heavens.  But do we need such conversions in order to live together as one nation?  Not at all.  We, the alumni decided to meet again after four years in spite of all the variety in our outlooks and professions.  We found meaning in the reunion.  We found meaning in the love that we could rediscover.  In spite of all the differences in our careers, attitudes, outlooks...

Can’t India find such meaning?  I’m wondering still, a week after the meet. 


Comments

  1. www.lifepartneracademy.comJanuary 3, 2015 at 4:09 PM

    What a wonderful reunion after 36 long years. It would have been so nice to recollect memories of the past and rediscover each other after such a long time.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 4, 2015 at 9:09 AM

      Indeed, Fayaz, it was an experience of a different kind.

      Delete
  2. parwatisingariJanuary 4, 2015 at 4:47 AM

    :) I guess we can only ask, no one answers because no is listening.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 4, 2015 at 9:10 AM

      True, listening to this kind of stuff doesn't help in their power games.

      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

The Vegetarian

Book Review Title: The Vegetarian Author: Han Kang Translator: Deborah Smith [from Korean] Publisher: Granta, London, 2018 Pages: 183 Insanity can provide infinite opportunities to a novelist. The protagonist of Nobel laureate Han Kang’s Booker-winner novel, The Vegetarian , thinks of herself as a tree. One can argue with ample logic and conviction that trees are far better than humans. “Trees are like brothers and sisters,” Yeong-hye, the protagonist, says. She identifies herself with the trees and turns vegetarian one day. Worse, she gives up all food eventually. Of course, she ends up in a mental hospital. The Vegetarian tells Yeong-hye’s tragic story on the surface. Below that surface, it raises too many questions that leave us pondering deeply. What does it mean to be human? Must humanity always entail violence? Is madness a form of truth, a more profound truth than sanity’s wisdom? In the disturbing world of this novel, trees represent peace, stillness, and nonviol...
6 comments
Read more

The RSS does not exist

An organisation that has 80,000 branches in India does not exist legally in any document. This is the cover story of The Caravan this month. By the way, The Caravan is one of the very few publications that still continues to exist in spite of being overtly critical of Narendra Modi and his Sangh Parivar. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is not registered as an organisation under any of the usual Indian registration laws such as the Societies Registration Act or as a trust or company. It functions as an unregistered voluntary organisation, though it is arguably the largest public organisation in the country. This situation makes the organisation absolutely unaccountable to anyone, argues The Caravan . The RSS is not legally required to file annual returns to the Tax department or disclose its financial details publicly though it deals with thousands of crores of rupees every year especially after Modi became the Prime Minister of the country. The membership of the organisat...
12 comments
Read more

No Problems Only Opportunities

You’ve probably heard this joke. A young man walked into his office one morning and found a beautiful young lady sitting in his chair. He called the MD and said, “Sir, I have a problem.” The MD replied, “Don’t you know our company’s motto, young man? No Problems, Only Opportunities .” When Suchita of The Blogchatter sent me a mail with the topic of this week’s blog hop –  - the first thing that came to my mind was the above joke. I know many people – too many, in fact – who went through terrible problems. My own life was a series of problems in none of which was there the consolation of any beautiful woman. One essential lesson I learnt from life is that life is a series of problems. You solve one and then arises the next one. Now I have reached an age when problems are no more problems: they are life itself. If you ask me what was the biggest problem I ever dealt with, it was my last years in Shillong. I was a lecturer in a college drawing a fat salary stipulated by the U...
13 comments
Read more