Skip to main content

The Betrayer Within


Have you read Reading Lolita in Tehran? I have just begun reading it. I am stuck on something. 

On the very first page, I find the words "that in the final analysis we are our own betrayers, playing Judas to our own Christ."

If and when you have sometime, can you please write something on it?

I received this email from a blogger friend yesterday.  My impulsive response was to say ‘No’ because I know the statement in the quote is true and, worse, I know that I have a Judas within me.  On a second thought, I decided to honour the trust placed in me by a good friend.

When I began my contemplation on the topic, the first thing that came to my mind was a story that appears in the opening pages of Richard Bach’s novel, Illusions.  There are some aquatic creatures that spend their entire life sticking to the bottom of the river.  They just cling.  Life is nothing but that clinging for them.  One day they spot a creature just like them floating on the water and moving on.  They think it’s a miracle.  They ask that creature to deliver them too.  The floating creature tells them that deliverance is their choice.  Leave the clinging and you are delivered.  But nobody was bold enough to leave the clinging.  And so they clung on.  And they made an epic about a Messiah who came along once upon a time to deliver them. 

My memory may have added personal tinges to the story.  But the message is that the Judas is within us just as much as the Christ is.  We are our own liberators.  We are our own enslavers.  It is a choice we make.  It is our choice to cling.  To cling to traditions, customs, culture, religion.  To cling to prejudices, envy, greed.  To cling to possessions or positions or whatever.   The clinging is the betrayer within us.

But aren’t we helpless sometimes?  Aren’t we forced by circumstances to cling?  The Judas within me is mostly a creation of external forces.  Is it? 

The external forces are often beyond my control.  I can only choose my responses to them.  My responses determine whether I’m following the Christ in me or the Judas. 

As Oscar Wilde said, we are all in the muck, but some of us see the stars.  Some of us choose to see the stars.  Seeing the stars and following them is the deliverance when the Judas encourages us to wallow in the muck. 

I need to make a personal clarification.  My writings often criticise certain people related to religion directly or indirectly.  It is not the work of any Judas.  I am fully conscious of what I’m doing.  I am following certain stars knowing well that I am also in the ineluctable muck.  I am not a fan of popular positive thinking which is actually the fast food of those who are fortunate enough to encounter fairly benign external forces.  I have struggled with extremely malicious external forces for the best part of my life.  So there is a cynic in me who is the real Judas.  But I also know well that the Christ is within me too. 

I have used the religious symbols only because of the mail which triggered this post.  I would rather use the word ‘betrayer’ for Judas and ‘redeemer’ for Christ.  Both the betrayer and the redeemer are within us.  Life is constant struggle between those two for many people like me. 


Comments

  1. sunaina sharmaMarch 16, 2016 at 6:32 PM

    First of all, thank you so much Sir for writing this post. The quick response even after you said that it would be difficult to write, is sincerely appreciated. The richness you bring to your posts by references to texts and socio-religious forces is something that not just enriches the argument, it also helps the readers to think. The betrayer and the redeemer is within us. But how many of us are able to see the stars. You aptly quoted Wilde on this. When we 'choose' to see the stars, is it a choice that has been given shape by a mix of external and internal forces? When we become 'betrayers', do most of us ever realize what we are doing?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 16, 2016 at 6:47 PM

      Choice has to be a conscious process, isn't it? Otherwise it wouldn't a choice. But many people are fortunate to be able to see the stars without having to make that choice. The stars are given to them by circumstances of birth, opportunities, people who help, etc. So the external factors do play a vital role.

      When it comes to the betrayer within, I think most of us don't realise what's happening to them. They are falling victims to their circumstances mostly out of helplessness and ignorance. We have a lot of ancient sages including the Buddha who thought that vice was a product of ignorance. People who don't see beyond what their inner betrayer shows commit crimes.

      Delete
  2. Ravish ManiMarch 16, 2016 at 10:20 PM

    I cent per cent agree with you word by word. Great post.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Saru SinghalMarch 16, 2016 at 11:10 PM

    Basically we have to let things go to attain peace. We have to make the right choices as external factors are beyond our control.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousMarch 17, 2016 at 5:10 PM

    Read and contemplate. That's what all Matheikal's posts do! This one reminded me of a family chat one day when one of the next generation said, "Aunty, sab mein Ram hai; aur Ravaan bhi". Translated, that reads, "Everyone has Ram in them; and Ravan as well."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 17, 2016 at 7:39 PM

      Thanks for the compliment, Lata. Contemplation is what my life has become :)

      Delete

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
47 comments
Read more

Bihar Election

Satish Acharya's Cartoon on how votes were bought in Bihar My wife has been stripped of her voting rights in the revised electoral roll. She has always been a conscientious voter unlike me. I refused to vote in the last Lok Sabha election though I stood outside the polling booth for Maggie to perform what she claimed was her duty as a citizen. The irony now is that she, the dutiful citizen, has been stripped of the right, while I, the ostensible renegade gets the right that I don’t care for. Since the Booth Level Officer [BLO] was my neighbour, he went out of his way to ring up some higher officer, sitting in my house, to enquire about Maggie’s exclusion. As a result, I was given the assurance that he, the BLO, would do whatever was in his power to get my wife her voting right. More than the voting right, what really bothered me was whether the Modi government was going to strip my wife of her Indian citizenship. Anything is possible in Modi’s India: Modi hai to Mumkin hai .   ...
16 comments
Read more

The music of an ageing man

Having entered the latter half of my sixties, I view each day as a bonus. People much younger become obituaries these days around me. That awareness helps me to sober down in spite of the youthful rush of blood in my indignant veins. Age hasn’t withered my indignation against injustice, fraudulence, and blatant human folly, much as I would like to withdraw from the ringside and watch the pugilism from a balcony seat with mellowed amusement. But my genes rage against my will. The one who warned me in my folly-ridden youth to be wary of my (anyone’s, for that matter) destiny-shaping character was farsighted. I failed to subdue the rages of my veins. I still fail. That’s how some people are, I console myself. So, at the crossroads of my sixties, I confess to a dismal lack of emotional maturity that should rightfully belong to my age. The problem is that the sociopolitical reality around me doesn’t help anyway to soothe my nerves. On the contrary, that reality is almost entirely re...
14 comments
Read more

The Art of Subjugation: A Case Study

Two Pulaya women, 1926 [Courtesy Mathrubhumi ] The Pulaya and Paraya communities were the original landowners in Kerala until the Brahmins arrived from the North with their religion and gods. They did not own the land individually; the lands belonged to the tribes. Then in the 8 th – 10 th centuries CE, the Brahmins known as Namboothiris in Kerala arrived and deceived the Pulayas and Parayas lock, stock, and barrel. With the help of religion. The Namboothiris proclaimed themselves the custodians of all wealth by divine mandate. They possessed the Vedic and Sanskrit mantras and tantras to prove their claims. The aboriginal people of Kerala couldn’t make head or tail of concepts such as Brahmadeya (land donated to Brahmins becoming sacred land) or Manu’s injunctions such as: “Land given to a Brahmin should never be taken back” [8.410] or “A king who confiscates land from Brahmins incurs sin” [8.394]. The Brahmins came, claimed certain powers given by the gods, and started exploi...
15 comments
Read more

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...
19 comments
Read more