Skip to main content

Inevitable Veils


The seats meant for the economically weaker sections in some Delhi schools are being sold at prices ranging from Rs 3 lakh to Rs 10 lakh, according to reports. Reputed schools including those run by religious organisations figure in the list of the culprits.  It is not clear whether the school managements are directly involved in the crime though it is impossible to believe that such rackets function in schools without the knowledge of the managements. 

When today’s Times of India came with many headlines about the above racket, I had just completed reading a short story titled ‘Pilla the Thief’ in Roji Abraham’s collection, Kaleidoscopic Lives.  The story is about Shivan Pilla, a very efficient thief, who later gets converted due to the affection shown by an elderly woman.  Pilla becomes a religious preacher after his conversion.  The people who called him a thief earlier now call him “Pastor”.  His reputation changed after he presented a ‘testimony’ at a religious convention.  The participants of the Convention were all ears as they listened to Pilla narrating his story. 

When I saw the names of some of the schools that figure in the Times of India’s reports on the EWS racket, Pilla and his conversion rushed to my mind without any rational connection.  There are religious organisations that do excellent works in trying to convert Pillas from a petty thief to a pastor.  Some of the very same organisations may figure in a list of racketeers too. 

How do we accept such contradictions?  The last thing I read before I went to bed last night was an email from a good old friend who recommended to me The Book of Mirdad.  I checked a few details about the book and came across this quote from it: “Ask not of things to shed their veils. Unveil yourselves, and things will be unveiled.” I am unveiling myself.  Trying to, at least.


PS. I promised Roji Abraham a review of his collection of short stories.  Dear Mr Abraham, I’ve managed to read only two stories so far.  Please bear with my sluggishness.  

Comments

  1. It's all about perception, I guess!

    ReplyDelete
  2. If its a percepton...then its veiled.. its actually intentions

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Intention is clearer than perception. Probably what Pradeep said above means that the contradiction I spoke of can be perceived as a natural collocation of the good and evil or something like that.

      Delete
  3. Sometimes the veil has to be pulled off. Agencies operating under the guide of doing good for others and profiting themselves all the while need to be exposed.
    There was a time when the media would not have been afraid to do their job and today we have journalists being burnt alive in public view.

    ReplyDelete
  4. a clearer and transparent process and organizational structure is indeed the need of the hour for school managements.

    and about the perception, I believe, perception are build with experience and are true most with a rare exception.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Oh...how I long missed this post. Speechless, I became seeing the reference in the last para. I thought the mail was not answered. But certainly I felt something toward it would be done. I wasn't wrong in my intuition.

    I feel that life is all about unveiling oneself. Hope the process began even without your knowing it consciously, sir. That old seer who spoke about Mirdad did speak about unveiling and the ultimate stage of Nirvana.

    But things are so alien to me. I'm still a long way to go unveiling myself of the deep lying conflicts in me.

    Also what about those Pillas (luckily the number is scanty in reputed schools like DPS) who never try to get converted by any kind of effort to improve them?

    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

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...

Are human systems repressive?

Salma I had never heard of Salma until she was sent to the Rajya Sabha as a Member of the Parliament by Tamil Nadu a couple of weeks back and a Malayalam weekly featured her on the cover with an interview. Salma’s story made me think on the nature of certain human systems and organisations including religion. Salma was born Rajathi Samsudeen. Marriage made her Rukiya, because her husband’s family didn’t think of Rajathi as a Muslim name. Salma is the pseudonym she chose as a writer. Salma’s life was always controlled by one system or another. Her religion and its ruthlessly patriarchal conventions determined the crests and troughs of her life’s waves. Her schooling ended the day she chose to watch a movie with a friend, another girl whose education was stopped too. They were in class 9. When Rajathi protested that her cousin, a boy, was also watching the same movie at the same time in the same cinema hall, her mother’s answer was, “He’s a boy; boys can do anything.” Rajathi was...

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...

Roles we Play

When I saw the above picture of Narendra Modi in the latest issue of India Today , what rushed to my mind instantly was a Malayalam film song Veshangal Janmangal … Life is a series of roles dressed up for the occasion. There are different costumes for celebrations and mourning, and there are people who can shed one and move into the other instantly. Are your smiles genuine? Do your tears mean sadness? Or, are they all costumes that suit the occasion? Are you just an actor who plays certain roles? Is the entire cosmos just a gigantic theatre for you? Where can we find the real you beneath all the costumes you keep changing day in and day out? Have you relinquished dharma in favour of cravings? Truth over expediency?