Skip to main content

Destiny


Whatever happens to me and is beyond my control is my destiny.  Natural calamities like earthquakes are beyond my control.  If I happen to be in a place where the terrorists have planted a bomb, that’s my destiny.  Accidents, diseases or other chance occurrences can alter my destiny in ways I could not have foreseen.  The stars that shine in the firmament above me are as much part of my destiny as is the darkness that descends ineluctably into the nooks and crannies along the way.    

What I am is my destiny.  What I am is not entirely beyond my control, I know.  Except my genes and hormones.  Except the environment that brought me up and certain impacts of that upbringing.  “I am the sum total of everything that went before me...,” as Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Child says, “of everything done-to-me.”  I am a product of the history that went before me as much as the one that is unfolding around me.  The martyrdom of two Prime Ministers of my country is part of my destiny as much the stratagems of the reigning one.  A lot of people came and went, and still come and go, leaving their marks on my destiny. 

I try to produce art out of the marks.  Scars refuse to change shapes.  Scars are beyond my control.  Otherwise, they wouldn’t be scars.

There is an invisible pied piper playing his tune to which the cosmos dances.  The planets move round prospective black holes.  Meteors collide.  Even the microscopic bacteria sway to that music.

In spite of all, in spite of all, there’s much that’s within my control. 
I choose certain steps of my existential dance.  However, inelegant they may turn out to be.  I have some choice, after all. 
In spite of the inelegance.

Many times, when the steps are inelegant I find my way.  My way. Such discoveries are not miraculous epiphanies.  Those are the ways in which I create myself.  Ways in which I alter my destiny.   
Labels:

Comments

  1. UnknownFebruary 16, 2015 at 8:14 PM

    Beautifully written. :)

    When you write so wonderfully even that is not completely because of your destiny. It is made possible by some tiny-big carefully chosen steps and the decision to learn and work hard.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 17, 2015 at 7:09 AM

      Of course, Namrata, quite a few things are under our control - apparently, at least.

      Delete
  2. Ashwin KumarFebruary 16, 2015 at 9:11 PM

    Impressive writing :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 17, 2015 at 7:11 AM

      Thank you. One usefulness of unpleasantness is the poetry it can produce. :)

      Delete
  3. AnonymousFebruary 16, 2015 at 9:43 PM

    You have a good choice of words here...I can alter my own destiny; likewise, I can have an impact on somebody else's...but then that could be a part of their destiny already. So, i think it is difficult to put everything in black and white.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anand MaraladFebruary 16, 2015 at 9:54 PM

    Nice post.

    Yes, one's life can not be a mathematical model but the efforts to make it one provides a living to astrologers and the likes.

    We are product of the times and we influence outcomes of future too. Continuation from Rushdie's novel says '"I am anything that happens after I'm gone which would not have happened if I had not come".

    That is because we altered our destinies!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 17, 2015 at 7:14 AM

      And those of others too. If we realise the full import of that probably we would be less insensitive.

      Delete
  5. wingsFebruary 16, 2015 at 10:45 PM

    Very thoughtful blog which would pass my mind several times since my teenage, but would lack so beautiful an expression like this. I still feel that even that could be the thing which is with in my control. I'd soon find an expression. I'm on the way. I'm the maker of my own destiny. In my own way... My Way. Thanks for reminding me.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 17, 2015 at 7:17 AM

      It's a relentless struggle, I guess, between my way and that piper's music. The struggle makes life worthwhile, perhaps.

      Delete
  6. Ravish ManiFebruary 17, 2015 at 11:46 AM

    As I see, it is just a matter of individual's perspective. I too wrote a post on "Free Will or Fatalism" here: http://successfulbeing.blogspot.in/2013/09/free-will-or-fatalism.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 17, 2015 at 12:02 PM

      I read your blog on the topic. You have tried to be philosophical. Mine is more of a poetic attempt to look at the topic.

      Delete
  7. Dipanwita ChakrabortyFebruary 17, 2015 at 12:55 PM

    Thoughtful indeed. It makes one sit and think over our choices too since what we do may change someone else's destiny. Loved the entire read. Good day!

    I also love what Mr. Amitabh Bachchan once mentioned in his blogs..."Fate is funny. It overshadows us in all departs". These lines are from Mr. Bachchan. Source- http://srbachchan.tumblr.com/post/101016434946

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 17, 2015 at 12:59 PM

      Thanks for sharing Mr Bachchan's view. There's no escape from fate, I suppose. Einstein was of that opinion. For him, however, fate meant the unbreakable laws that govern everything from the grass to the stars.

      Delete
  8. UnknownFebruary 17, 2015 at 2:47 PM

    That was an amazing piece of writing. The language and choice of words powerful and apt! superb! I would have a very similar perspective on Destiny!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 17, 2015 at 6:41 PM

      Life takes to some crossroads occasionally and forces us to stare ahead ... and poetry takes weird shapes. That's what happened here.

      Delete
  9. Lancelot QuadrasFebruary 18, 2015 at 10:04 AM

    I began my morning reading posts, and i'm glad i came across your's.
    Maybe that was my destiny.
    Liked your view.
    There are just a few things we have a control on.
    We often give extra attention to things which are beyond our control.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 18, 2015 at 10:27 AM

      If we stopped doing that (giving extra attention to those which are beyond our control) and started taking charge of things within control, life would be quite easy an affair :)

      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
44 comments
Read more

Florentino’s Many Loves

Florentino Ariza has had 622 serious relationships (combo pack with sex) apart from numerous fleeting liaisons before he is able to embrace the only woman whom he loved with all his heart and soul. And that embrace happens “after a long and troubled love affair” that lasted 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days. Florentino is in his late 70s when he is able to behold, and hold as well, the very body of his beloved Fermina, who is just a few years younger than him. She now stands before him with her wrinkled shoulders, sagged breasts, and flabby skin that is as pale and cold as a frog’s. It is the culmination of a long, very long, wait as far as Florentino is concerned, the end of his passionate quest for his holy grail. “I’ve remained a virgin for you,” he says. All those 622 and more women whose details filled the 25 diaries that he kept writing with meticulous devotion have now vanished into thin air. They mean nothing now that he has reached where he longed to reach all his life. The
62 comments
Read more

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so
39 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

Octlantis

I was reading an essay on octopuses when friend John walked in. When he is bored of his usual activities – babysitting and gardening – he would come over. Politics was the favourite concern of our conversations. We discussed politics so earnestly that any observer might think that we were running the world through the politicians quite like the gods running it through their devotees. “Octopuses are quite queer creatures,” I said. The essay I was reading had got all my attention. Moreover, I was getting bored of politics which is irredeemable anyway. “They have too many brains and a lot of hearts.” “That’s queer indeed,” John agreed. “Each arm has a mind of its own. Two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons are found in their arms. The arms can taste, touch, feel and act on their own without any input from the brain.” “They are quite like our politicians,” John observed. Everything is linked to politics in John’s mind. I was impressed with his analogy, however. “Perhaps, you’re r
34 comments
Read more