Skip to main content

Companionship and some smiles


One of the paradoxes of human life is that society corrupts but isolation destroys.  While critiquing Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, J H Stape points out a number of related paradoxes.  Civilisation is a hypocritical veneer over savagery; yet it is a valuable achievement to be vigilantly guarded. Morality is a sham; but without it human beings become sham humans. Awareness is superior to ignorance; yet ignorance can be bliss in many ways. A person who sells his soul does at least have a soul to sell, while most people who try to redeem their souls through quotidian religious practices do not have a soul at all.  

The latest Indispire theme [Human beings need someone in their life. At least a person to ask occasionally, how one feels now. What's your say on it?] brought to my mind these paradoxes. The theme is essentially about relationships. It can be rephrased as: Can we live alone? Do we need at least one companion?

Hermits live alone. However, their god(s) and spiritual practices save them from the potential destructiveness of isolation. There are recluses who are not hermits.  Their dislike of human society sustains their isolation. I guess they find some means of engagement which may be a less spiritual alternative to the hermit’s choice. Pets, garden, books or something else may be their saviours. If they are happy with their choices, I am no one to question them. If they are not happy with the choices, I still have no right to question them as long as their discontent does not spill out in antisocial forms.

Personally, I am not enamoured of any society. I never fit into any of the societies that were kind enough to tolerate me from my childhood. And I had no choice but tolerate them too. Given a choice along with the economic buffers it entails, I would choose quasi-isolation.  Books are good companions. They are not only harmless but also intellectually stimulating and, to some extent, emotionally sustaining. But the emotional sustenance provided by books is a virtual reality, almost like what I derive from blogging. Some real emotions are good. A caring touch, an affectionate glance, some real reciprocity is very reassuring. It makes me feel more human. And that feeling has a comfortable warmth about it.

That warmth can occasionally spark off into a smouldering fire. That’s another inevitable paradox of human life. Since there is no safe escape from such paradoxes, I choose the minimum required. What really matters is that there are more smiles in life with that minimum.





Comments

  1. UnknownJuly 22, 2016 at 7:12 PM

    I agree with you. I am same kind of person. Not very social, but have some nice friends and family whose company I like a lot. We can not survive only in virtual world. We do need someone to talk to,love, and share. These are basic human instincts.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Pranju chakrapaniJuly 22, 2016 at 7:26 PM

    Somehow I practice the same minimalistic approach and can vouch for the fact that a companion, living or non living, is the minimum requirement for one to not fall prey to the mental trauma of complete isolation.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 23, 2016 at 6:53 AM

      Whenever I let more people into my life I was inviting trouble. Nonliving things as friends! Well, that's an interesting option. I've mentioned my choice of books.

      Delete
  3. sunaina sharmaJuly 23, 2016 at 4:13 PM

    Heart of Darkness is one of my favorite novel....read it long time back when I was doing graduation....I want to read it again now to see how it will affect me.....You depict the dilemma of isolation and companionship so well. There are some, me included, who find solace in isolation or in the world of books. But then, when we blog, we connect, we want an interaction. And then, there are times when that gentle touch and an honest care is all that we need to keep ourselves sane.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 23, 2016 at 9:25 PM

      It's a challenging novel. That's why it's a classic.

      Somewhere in this virtual space, probably we can escape from Kurtz and other missionaries. I hope. Our virtual isolation and our virtual companionship matter to us. And they may be a threat to the mullas and babas.

      Delete
  4. UnknownJuly 23, 2016 at 5:15 PM

    Loved the gravitas of these lines-

    Civilisation is a hypocritical veneer over savagery; yet it is a valuable achievement to be vigilantly guarded. Morality is a sham; but without it human beings become sham humans. Awareness is superior to ignorance; yet ignorance can be bliss in many ways.

    ReplyDelete
  5. incredibleopinionsJuly 23, 2016 at 8:43 PM

    There is a fine line between solitude and be alone. Some people find happiness in their solitude because they have found their belongingness to themselves which is far better than anyone else.

    ReplyDelete
  6. incredibleopinionsJuly 23, 2016 at 8:44 PM

    There is a fine line between solitude and be alone. Some people find happiness in their solitude because they have found their belongingness to themselves which is far better than anyone else.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 23, 2016 at 9:20 PM

      The line is rather crude. Certain powers determine it. It may be the terrorists, politicians, religious preachers...

      Delete
  7. Nima DasJuly 28, 2016 at 3:44 PM

    Interesting read,as usual.I fully agree with you ,sometimes its better to seek one's own company rather then be in the midst of people who are hollow and fake.When I was young I had a higher level of tolerance and was very social,now i find it very difficult to interact with people who's company can be a pain. Like you say Ignorance is bliss and I am happy with my books ,with the telly and with blogs.Its true you can feel lonely in a crowd.Being with myself is actually enjoyable.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 30, 2016 at 7:31 AM

      If you are enjoying your own company you will never be lonely. I live alone with my wife. But I am the happiest when nobody interferes. The virtual world of blogging is ok for me. Enough for me.

      It's life and its experiences that make us what we are to a great extent. My own experiences with people have been terrible.

      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

The Ugly Duckling

Source: Acting Company A. A. Milne’s one-act play, The Ugly Duckling , acquired a classical status because of the hearty humour used to present a profound theme. The King and the Queen are worried because their daughter Camilla is too ugly to get a suitor. In spite of all the devious strategies employed by the King and his Chancellor, the princess remained unmarried. Camilla was blessed with a unique beauty by her two godmothers but no one could see any beauty in her physical appearance. She has an exquisitely beautiful character. What use is character? The King asks. The play is an answer to that question. Character plays the most crucial role in our moral science books and traditional rhetoric, religious scriptures and homilies. When it comes to practical life, we look for other things such as wealth, social rank, physical looks, and so on. As the King says in this play, “If a girl is beautiful, it is easy to assume that she has, tucked away inside her, an equally beauti...
31 comments
Read more

Indian Knowledge Systems

Shashi Tharoor wrote a massive book back in 2018 to explore the paradoxes that constitute the man called Narendra Modi. Paradoxes dominate present Indian politics. One of them is what’s called the Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS). What constitute the paradox here are two parallel realities: one genuinely valuable, and the other deeply regressive. The contributions of Aryabhata and Brahmagupta to mathematics, Panini to linguistics, Vedanta to philosophy, and Ayurveda to medicine are genuine traditions that may deserve due attention. But there’s a hijacked version of IKS which is a hilariously, if not villainously, political project. Much of what is now packaged as IKS in government documents, school curricula, and propaganda includes mythological claims treated as historical facts, pseudoscience (e.g., Ravana’s Pushpaka Vimana as a real aircraft or Ganesha’s trunk as a product of plastic surgery), astrology replacing astronomy, ritualism replacing reasoning, attempts to invent the r...
17 comments
Read more

Waiting for the Mahatma

Book Review I read this book purely by chance. R K Narayan is not a writer whom I would choose for any reason whatever. He is too simple, simplistic. I was at school on Saturday last and I suddenly found myself without anything to do though I was on duty. Some duties are like that: like a traffic policeman’s duty on a road without any traffic! So I went up to the school library and picked up a book which looked clean. It happened to be Waiting for the Mahatma by R K Narayan. A small book of 200 pages which I almost finished reading on the same day. The novel was originally published in 1955, written probably as a tribute to Mahatma Gandhi and India’s struggle for independence. The edition that I read is a later reprint by Penguin Classics. Twenty-year-old Sriram is the protagonist though Gandhi towers above everybody else in the novel just as he did in India of the independence-struggle years. Sriram who lives with his grandmother inherits significant wealth when he turns 20. Hi...
9 comments
Read more

Ghost with a Cat

It was about midnight when Kuriako stopped his car near the roadside eatery known as thattukada in Kerala. He still had another 27 kilometres to go, according to Google Map. Since Google Map had taken him to nowhere lands many a time, Kuriako didn’t commit himself much to that technology. He would rather rely on wayside shopkeepers. Moreover, he needed a cup of lemon tea. ‘How far is Anakkad from here?’ Kuriako asked the tea-vendor. Anakkad is where his friend Varghese lived. The two friends would be meeting after many years now. Both had taken voluntary retirement five years ago from their tedious and rather absurd clerical jobs in a government industry and hadn’t met each other ever since. Varghese abandoned all connection with human civilisation, which he viewed as savagery of the most brutal sort, and went to live in a forest with only the hill tribe people in the neighbourhood. The tribal folk didn’t bother him at all; they had their own occupations. Varghese bought a plot ...
8 comments
Read more