Skip to main content

Butterflies and Perspectives


Horse: If you don’t want to be a caterpillar, how can you become a butterfly?

Caterpillar: Did you pass through so many stages before you became a horse?

Horse: Not exactly the same stages.  But stages, yes.

Caterpillar: Was it hard?  The stages, I mean.

Horse: It depends.  Being a caterpillar is not hard for all caterpillars, I guess.

Caterpillar: One grows up only by passing through the stages?

Horse: One grows real only by passing through the stages.

Caterpillar: Real?

Horse: Opposite of fraud, let’s say.

Caterpillar: Why should anyone be a fraud?

Horse: Discontent, I guess.  Not happy being what you are.  Wanting to be something else.  Somebody else.

Caterpillar: Like me?

Horse: Well.  There are many creatures who are unhappy about what they are.  Who want to be somebody else.  Becoming real is a slow process, I guess.  It needs patience.  Like being a caterpillar crawling on leaves.  And then a chrysalis. 

Caterpillar: But only we butterflies go through all those stages.

Horse: Not at all.  Everyone does.  The names of the stages differ.  Infancy, childhood, adolescence, and so on.  Many break while going through these stages.  Those who have blunt edges, glass shells, air bags, and such things. 

Caterpillar: And then?  After the break up, I mean.

Horse: Some vanish from the earth.  Some survive and learn to live without those attachments like blunt edges or glass shells.  That’s how they become real. Shedding the unwanted attachments.  It’s tough.  Shedding attachments is tough.

Caterpillar: For us that happens naturally.

Horse: So you’re luckier than the others.

Caterpillar: And I thought I was the most unlucky creature!

Horse: Perspectives.  Perspectives make the difference.
Labels:

Comments

  1. sunaina sharmaOctober 16, 2015 at 4:06 AM

    Some great points here Sir.....I am wondering what stage I am in.....what perspectives I hold.....and whether I will vanish with the vanities I hold or whether I will survive.....very thought-provoking......

    ReplyDelete
  2. IndraniOctober 16, 2015 at 9:26 AM

    Very thought provoking!Discontent is often the cause of misery.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 16, 2015 at 7:48 PM

      On the other hand, discontent can lead to creativity.

      Delete
  3. UnknownOctober 16, 2015 at 10:59 AM

    This is brilliant!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sunshine-struckOctober 16, 2015 at 12:15 PM

    By the time we know we have pass through the stages and know what is real, we get old and lose physical vigor. Life is funny for an outsider!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sunshine-struckOctober 16, 2015 at 7:35 PM

      Corrected*

      By the time we pass through the stages and know what is real, we get old and lose physical vigor. Life is funny for an outsider!

      Delete
    2. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 16, 2015 at 7:53 PM

      True. The process is pretty long. Quite many people are happy being fake!

      Delete
  5. UnknownOctober 16, 2015 at 1:17 PM

    Thats such a beautiful insight!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 16, 2015 at 7:55 PM

      Personal experience, in fact. ... Thanks for the compliment.

      Delete
  6. Namrata KumariOctober 18, 2015 at 1:58 AM

    Inspirational! And I thought, I am the unlucky one. :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Roohi BhatnagarOctober 18, 2015 at 8:58 PM

    Good one :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Titas BiswasOctober 22, 2015 at 1:38 PM

    Um......Have a look at the name of my blog!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Titas BiswasOctober 22, 2015 at 1:38 PM

    Um......Have a look at the name of my blog!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pranita a perverted genius

Bulldozer begins its work at Sawan Pranita was a perverted genius. She had Machiavelli’s brain, Octavian’s relentlessness, and Levin’s intellectual calibre. She could have worked wonders if she wanted. She could have created a beautiful world around her. She had the potential. Yet she chose to be a ruthless exterminator. She came to Sawan Public School just to kill it. A religious cult called Radha Soami Satsang Beas [RSSB] had taken over the school from its owner who had never visited the school for over 20 years. This owner, a prominent entrepreneur with a gargantuan ego, had come to the conclusion that the morality of the school’s staff was deviating from the wavelengths determined by him. Moreover, his one foot was inching towards the grave. I was also told that there were some domestic noises which were grating against his patriarchal sensibilities. One holy solution for all these was to hand over the school and its enormous campus (nearly 20 acres of land on the outskirts
12 comments
Read more

Queen of Religion

She looked like Queen Victoria in the latter’s youth but with a snow-white head. She was slim, fair and graceful. She always smiled but the smile had no life. Someone on the campus described it as a “plastic smile.” She was charming by physical appearance. Soon all of us on the Sawan school campus would realise how deceptive appearances were. Queen took over the administration of Sawan school on behalf of her religious cult RSSB [Radha Soami Satsang Beas]. A lot was said about RSSB in the previous post. Its godman Gurinder Singh Dhillon is now 70 years old. I don’t know whether age has mellowed his lust for land and wealth. Even at the age of 64, he was embroiled in a financial scam that led to the fall of two colossal business enterprises, Fortis Healthcare and Religare finance. That was just a couple of years after he had succeeded in making Sawan school vanish without a trace from Delhi which he did for the sake of adding the school’s twenty-odd acres of land to his existing hun
16 comments
Read more

Machiavelli the Reverend

Let us go today , you and I, through certain miasmic streets. Nothing will be quite clear along our way because this journey is through some delusions and illusions. You will meet people wearing holy robes and talking about morality and virtues. Some of them will claim to be god’s men and some will make taller claims. Some of them are just amorphous. Invisible. But omnipotent. You can feel their power around you. On you. Oppressing you. Stifling you. Reverend Machiavelli is one such oppressive power. You will meet Franz Kafka somewhere along the way. Joseph K’s ghost will pass by. Remember Joseph K who was arrested one fine morning for a crime that nobody knew anything about? Neither Joseph nor the men who arrest him know why Joseph K is arrested. The power that keeps Joseph K under arrest is invisible. He cannot get answers to his valid questions from the visible agents of that power. He cannot explain himself to that power. Finally, he is taken to a quarry outside the town wher
19 comments
Read more

Levin the good shepherd

AI-generated image The lost sheep and its redeemer form a pet motif in Christianity. Jesus portrayed himself as a good shepherd many times. He said that the good shepherd will leave his 99 sheep in order to bring the lost sheep back to the fold. When he finds the lost sheep, the shepherd is happier about that one sheep than about the 99, Jesus claimed. He was speaking metaphorically. The lost sheep is the sinner in Jesus’ parable. Sin is a departure from the ‘right’ way. Angels raise a toast in heaven whenever a sinner returns to the ‘right’ path [Luke 15:10]. A lot of Catholic priests I know carry some sort of a Redeemer complex in their souls. They love the sinner so much that they cannot rest until they make the angels of God run for their cups of joy. I have also been fortunate to have one such priest-friend whom I shall call Levin in this post. He has befriended me right from the year 1976 when I was a blundering adolescent and he was just one year older than me. He possesse
8 comments
Read more

Nakulan the Outcast

Nakulan was one of the many tenants of Hevendrea . A professor in the botany department of the North Eastern Hill University, he was a very lovable person. Some sense of inferiority complex that came from his caste status made him scoff the very idea of his lovability. He lived with his wife and three children in one of Heavendrea’s many cottages. When he wanted to have a drink, he would walk over to my hut. We sipped our whiskies and discussed Shillong’s intriguing politics or something of the sort while my cassette player crooned gently in the background. Nakulan was more than ten years my senior by age. He taught a subject which had never aroused my interest at any stage of my life. It made no difference to me whether a leaf was pinnately compound or palmately compound. You don’t need to know about anther and stigma in order to understand a flower. My friend Levin would have ascribed my lack of interest in Nakulan’s subject to my egomania. I always thought that Nakulan lived
15 comments
Read more