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.


Labels:

Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 14, 2015 at 11:14 PM

    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. Purba chakrabortyOctober 15, 2015 at 1:02 AM

    Wow! Beautiful and thought provoking verses :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sunshine-struckOctober 15, 2015 at 7:18 AM

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

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 15, 2015 at 7:49 AM

      Most people are victims of the predator called religious truth.

      Delete
  4. Roohi BhatnagarOctober 15, 2015 at 11:56 AM

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

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 15, 2015 at 4:06 PM

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

      Delete
  5. UnknownOctober 17, 2015 at 1:35 PM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 17, 2015 at 2:06 PM

      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

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

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

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
11 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