Skip to main content

Quest

A church in Kerala


Somewhere in the gloom
God took flesh upon himself
He washed its feet
fed the spirit’s hunger
and went to hang himself
On a cross.

Flesh haunts flesh
As the cross haunts God
To be nailed to each other:

The eternal quest.

I wrote this poem about 20 years ago.  In those 20 years I came across very many people who were affiliated to different religions.  Some of them tried much to infuse me with their fervour and verve.  Nothing has changed a bit.  Neither me nor them.  The quest of each is different.  And that's an eternal quest.  Even God is helpless.

Comments

  1. Ila VarmaDecember 22, 2015 at 9:04 AM

    Difference in perception of individuals.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 22, 2015 at 9:42 AM

      Indeed. Plus the eternal conflict between the spirit and the flesh.

      Delete
  2. UnknownDecember 22, 2015 at 10:37 AM

    Probably how one deals with this conflict between spirit and flesh is the test that people are subjected to.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 22, 2015 at 12:55 PM

      Blessed are those for whom the conflict is not a serious issue.

      Delete
  3. KalpanaDecember 22, 2015 at 11:11 AM

    Really enjoyed your poem Matheikal and the thoughts you have about it now. Of course it is the difference in perception of what we know we need to do and how we feel about it. As well as finding a balance between the two. I'm more interested in how this battle of the self with the self, which is such a private affair, has become the business of organised religion. Bizarre.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 22, 2015 at 12:59 PM

      It's because religion plays multiple roles in a person's life. A source of identity, truth, community feeling... Often religion has little to do with spirituality for the majority. Rather rituals substitute for spirituality.

      Delete
  4. Rakhi JayashankarDecember 22, 2015 at 11:42 AM

    Your success lies in the fact that you did not change.

    ReplyDelete
  5. UnknownDecember 22, 2015 at 9:23 PM

    nice poem

    ReplyDelete
  6. sunaina sharmaDecember 24, 2015 at 6:11 PM

    Wasn't the'seeker' in the poem 'Seekers' a little more blessed to have found that contentment? It was good he didn't 'open his eyes' and just embraced the 'touch'. I read the two poems together and was struck by this thought.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalDecember 24, 2015 at 6:34 PM

      True, Sunaina, though being blessed is also a subjective contentment. For a god the flesh would be a curse from which he has to deliver himself as quickly as possible. A man can afford the little comforts like in 'Seekers.'

      Delete
  7. HaddockDecember 25, 2015 at 11:29 PM

    Even God is helpless..... worth pondering.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

Kailasnath the Paradox

AI-generated illustration It wasn’t easy to discern whether he was a friend or merely an amused onlooker. He was my colleague at the college, though from another department. When my life had entered a slippery slope because of certain unresolved psychological problems, he didn’t choose to shun me as most others did. However, when he did condescend to join me in the college canteen sipping tea and smoking a cigarette, I wasn’t ever sure whether he was befriending me or mocking me. Kailasnath was a bundle of paradoxes. He appeared to be an alpha male, so self-assured and lord of all that he surveyed. Yet if you cared to observe deeply, you would find too many chinks in his armour. Beneath all those domineering words and gestures lay ample signs of frailty. The tall, elegantly slim and precisely erect stature would draw anyone’s attention quickly. Kailasnath was always attractively dressed though never unduly stylish. Everything about him exuded an air of chic confidence. But the wa
9 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
16 comments
Read more

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
37 comments
Read more