Skip to main content

Some Virtues


Purity
I used to be Snow White until I was bored
And drifted in quest of colours
And met holders of magic mirrors.
Colours come in at the cost of whiteness.

Generosity
My generosity with words overflowed
Until the words became flames
And she said she was ready to burn herself
Wasn’t she doing it from day one, she asked.

Truthfulness
So many holy books full of truths
for which people kill one another.
And I’m still seeking that truth
which doesn’t demand so much blood.

Forgiveness
Every time I joined my palms in rueful prayer
God said he had already forgiven me.
But I couldn’t forgive him
for making me a beggar again and again.

Modesty
I have a tail that’s nothing much to boast about,
It loves to get in the way sometimes just
to show off whatever colours and plumes it has;
The silly little thing is attached to me as I am to it.


Comments

  1. Such a soul-stirring verse expressed with sheer magnanimity! I am moved by your take on these vital virtues of life... :') Thanks for sharing such a thoughtful post.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow! Beautiful and thought provoking verses :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Truthfulness. That part. Very true. The stark truth of society, brought goosebumps in me. I just stared at the sentence.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Most people are victims of the predator called religious truth.

      Delete
  4. "But I couldn’t forgive him
    for making me a beggar again and again."
    Thought provoking!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Why can't an omnipotent god create beings who would naturally choose good over evil?

      Delete
  5. It was the forgiveness part that brought goose bumps in me.

    It reminded me of my first fight with the Almighty, when I threw a F- bomb, on him. Since then, he has been constantly playing with me. I really envy those people who proclaim themselves as an atheist or a theist. I mean how can one be cent percent sure in his life?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Spirituality is a constant struggle between personal truths and the infinite mystery. Those who find certainties are lucky.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Grandeur of the dooms

John Keats by William Hilton [Wikipedia] One of the poems included in CBSE’s class 12 English literature is an extract from Keats’ Endymion . A question that has come to me again and again from students as well as teachers is: What does “the grandeur of the dooms…” mean? It is a line that has perplexed me too. I have been amused by the kind of interpretations given in the guidebooks for students. Quite many of these books interpret the word ‘dooms’ to mean the Doomsday. Look at the following answer given in one such guidebook made available online by a well-known educational establishment.  That is very amusing considering the fact that Keats was an agnostic, if not a confirmed atheist. Keats would never accept a God who would come riding a majestic cloud on the day of the Last Judgment to apportion the good and the evil souls to Heaven and Hell. Evil is an integral part of life, Keats knew too well. No human can avoid evil any more than “a rose can avoid a blighting wind.” How...

Broligarchy

A page from Time Broligarchy is a new word I learnt from the latest issue of the Time magazine one of whose lead stories is titled ‘ American Broligarchy ’. Wikipedia teaches me that ‘broligarchy’ is “a neologism and portmanteau combining oligarchy and broism describing the rule of government by a coterie of extremely wealthy men (occupying leadership roles in the tech companies and tech-enabled businesses).” The Time article informs us that Trump’s greatest “bros” are Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, the three men who were given the most prominent seats, ahead of Cabinet members, at Trump’s Presidential inauguration. These wealthy businessmen play crucial roles in Trump’s way of governing America. They pump a lot of unregulated money into politics for their own selfish reasons. A menacing outcome is an unhealthy (for the public) expansion of presidential power with fewer checks on the Congress. The Time laments that this “would be a recipe for more corruption under an...

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

A Crazy Novel

Jayasree Kalathil, Sandhya Mary, and the book Book Review Title: Maria, Just Maria Author: Sandhya Mary Translator: Jayasree Kalathil T his is a crazy novel. It is hard to find a normal human being in it. There is more than one place in the narrative where we are told that every human being is insane to some degree. I won’t disagree with that. However, there are certain standards or wavelengths which are generally considered to be ‘normal’ if not sane and it is that normalcy which keeps the world going. Sandhya Mary’s debut novel flings a huge question mark on that normalcy. As I was reading this novel, I was constantly reminded of a joke that Albert Camus narrates in his brilliant essay on the meaning of life, The Myth of Sisyphus . A madman is sitting by a swimming pool with a fishing rod in hand. Seeing his serenity, his psychiatrist [I think in Camus’s own version it’s just a passerby – but I find the psychiatrist more appropriate] asks him whether he has caught any fish....

Anyone for a better world?

The above video was sent to me on WhatsApp by a friend who also asked me to write a blog post on the injustices of capitalism. The friend quoted Lenin: “Capitalism is going to give us the rope with which we are going to hang them.” I wasn’t particularly enthused by the message or the demand for a blog post because I am like Benjamin the donkey in Orwell’s Animal Farm . Benjamin is cynical when it comes to politics. He knows that no party or ideology is going to make any substantial difference as far as the common folk are concerned. What can be an alternative to capitalism, for instance? Socialism/Communism? Benign dictatorship? Theocracy? The video above shows the absolute heartlessness of capitalism. But has socialism/communism been any better in the erstwhile USSR, China, and present North Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba? Dictatorship and theocracy are not economic systems, but have they saved any nation from injustices? I believe the problem is not with systems or ideologies . T...