Skip to main content

Life and choices



Indian Bloggers



 It is when I actually constructed a house for myself that I learnt how I could have made a better house at less cost.  It is when I reach the autumn of life that I learn how richer life would have been had I made different choices.  But neither can be undone.  The construction of a house is a one-time accomplishment.  At least, one’s life is a one-time affair.  There’s no going back.

Life is a cruel game of the gods if they exist.  Christopher McDougall’s gazelle and lion that wake up every morning in an African forest and start running for survival are poignant symbols of that cruel game.  The graceful gazelle has to run in order to save its life from the feral lion.  And the lion has to run and capture the gazelle for its own survival. 

The conqueror and the vanquished keep running in the wicked game of life.  Could I have chosen to stand out of that game and watch?  Even that wouldn’t save me because I wouldn’t be able to bear the heartlessness of that game beyond the initial moments.  Could I have chosen to be a conqueror and gone on rampages defending my holy cows?  My DNA would have revolted.

So I end up as one of the many vanquished ones.  Like a piece of the flotsam and jetsam cast ashore by the endless restlessness of the ocean whose craving is at once boundless and circumscribed.

Flotsam and jetsam.  Nice imagery.  And it brings to my mind the music band, especially their song, Life is a Mess.  “No way back from here,” begins the song.  Just go on.  Take the ride.  “And your troubles will still be here / Troubles will still be here, troubles are here....”

Let me give the link to that song before I sign off for now and carry on my ride.

PS. This is written specifically for Indispire Edition 129: 

If you were the writer of your own story - Your Life. How would you have altered it? #choice




Labels:

Comments

  1. BushraAugust 6, 2016 at 5:01 PM

    There's no going back.. how true! Lovely post :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownAugust 6, 2016 at 5:23 PM

    Life is a one time affair.....and we have to use it well ...cautiously.....Thats a good thought sir

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalAugust 7, 2016 at 7:49 AM

      Life is a series of lessons... Happy to see you here, Tony.

      Delete
  3. UnknownAugust 6, 2016 at 8:33 PM

    The gazelle can ogle at juice of the grass, like the lion can have a timid moment with the lioness.
    Moments make life and moments have a life of their own.

    ReplyDelete
  4. incredibleopinionsAugust 6, 2016 at 10:56 PM

    Very thoughtful - Life is a one time affair!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anita SabatAugust 7, 2016 at 11:57 AM

    I guess we need to keep going & making the choices on the way.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalAugust 7, 2016 at 2:09 PM

      Yes, that's all what we can do. But the irony is that all the lessons we learn will be in vain... If only some of those lessons could be learnt as a child.

      Delete
  6. indu chhibberAugust 8, 2016 at 7:45 AM

    Yes we all tend to reminisce as we grow old.
    My conclusion can be viewed here http://jeeteraho.blogspot.in/2016/07/the-crossroad.html

    ReplyDelete
  7. sunaina sharmaAugust 9, 2016 at 3:38 AM

    It will go on....and on....and on.....it's like the more we know the more we don't know....I remembered Waiting for Godot after reading your post.....you made me want to read that play again....it is one of my fav.....:)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalAugust 9, 2016 at 6:17 AM

      Nobody dramatised the naked absurdity of human life as well as Beckett did.

      Delete
  8. Swati BatraAugust 9, 2016 at 11:34 AM

    Life is to be lived well. No quitting no looking back. Just do your task and move on.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalAugust 10, 2016 at 11:32 AM

      I'm sure everybody wants to live well. But often the system stymies us.

      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 Veiled Women

One of the controversies that has been raging in Kerala for quite some time now is about a girl student’s decision to wear the hijab to school. The school run by Christian nuns did not appreciate the girl’s choice of religious identity over the school uniform and punished her by making her stand outside the classroom. The matter was taken up immediately by a fundamentalist Muslim organisation (SDPI) which created the usual sound and fury on the campus as well as outside. Kerala is a liberal state in which Hindus (55%), Muslims (27%), and Christians (18%) have been living in fair though superficial harmony even after Modi’s BJP with its cantankerous exclusivism assumed power in Delhi. Maybe, Modi created much insecurity feeling among the Muslims in Kerala too resulting in some reactionary moves like the hijab mentioned above. The school could have handled it diplomatically given the general nature of Muslims which is not quite amenable to sense and sensibility. From the time I shi...
13 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 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

You Don’t Know the Sky

I asked the bird to lend me wings. I longed to fly like her. Gracefully. She tilted her head and said, “Wings won’t be of any use to you because you don’t know the sky.” And she flew away. Into the sky. For a moment, I was offended. What arrogance! Does she think she owns the sky? As I watched the bird soar effortlessly into the blue vastness, I began to see what she meant. I wanted wings, not the flight. Like wanting freedom without the responsibility that comes with it. The bird had earned her wings. Through storms, through hunger, through braving the odds. She manoeuvred her way among the missiles that flew between invisible borders erected by us humans. She witnessed the macabre dance of death that brought down cities, laid waste a whole country. Wings are about more than flights. How often have you perched on the stump of a massive tree brought down by a falling warhead and wept looking at the debris of civilisations? The language of the sky is different from tha...
13 comments
Read more