Skip to main content

Unpredictability and Life


It’s been a rough ride from my youth until this day when my hairs have greyed and smiles are warped.  Very few things went right.  And the wrongs have been exacting teachers.  They have taught me that most stories do not have fairy tale endings.  Very few poems rhyme or follow rhythm.  The most beautiful smiles may be sustained by terribly battered hearts. 

Unpredictability is the essence of life.  Which sperm out of the millions ejaculated gets to fertilise the egg?  What all genes do the chromosomes carry from each partner?  How do they configure their permutations and combinations?  There begins the story of life’s unpredictability.

Once you are pushed out into the world, unpredictability is the ruler.  From your parents to your boss(es), from the priest in the church to the politician on the throne, from the fellow next door to the colleague on the next seat, there’s a whole range of permutations and combinations impinging upon you every moment of your life.

Personally, I was an utter failure dealing with a lot of those kaleidoscopic punches and pinches.  The more you fail, the more the world loves to defeat you.  Finally you bow out and leave the stage to the more spectacular actors. 

Perhaps that bowing out was the most unpredictable moment in my life.  It happened a year and a half back, thanks to a godman and his women who usurped the stage on which I played my ineluctable drama.  It was not at all about the loss of a job.  It was about villainy masquerading as religious holiness.  It was about subhuman manipulations and nefarious gambits. 

It was about the nausea that Jean-Paul Sartre portrayed in the character of Antoine Roquentin.  Some experiences hurl you into a vacuum where you have to redefine yourself and start all over again.

No, I’m not blaming anyone.  I understand that that’s how the world is.  The drawback is mine.  So I drew back.  From the stage.  The only problem now is that the very mention of a godman makes me retch.



PS. This was provoked by Indispire Edition 142: Life is unpredictable !! Write about your unpredictable moment which changed your life !! #UnpredictableMoment
Indian Bloggers


Labels:

Comments

  1. BrajaNovember 6, 2016 at 9:57 PM

    Wow! It takes real courage for a man to write this. My salute to you. Sir, your English vocabulary is also too strong. It must have taken years of effort to develop your language skills. Appreciations!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 6, 2016 at 10:10 PM

      Thanks, friend, for the appreciation. I've been an English teacher for a long time :)

      Delete
  2. SaketNovember 7, 2016 at 7:45 PM

    I remember your post in the two lady teachers.

    I like 'Most stories do not end in fairy tales'

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 7, 2016 at 8:59 PM

      Those two ladies have left some indelible marks in my being. They can be proud of that :)

      Delete
  3. AnonymousNovember 7, 2016 at 8:14 PM

    You are a great writer sir. I became a fan of your writing the day when I read your post on narcissism. Thank you for sharing your experiences. :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. sunaina sharmaNovember 9, 2016 at 4:33 AM

    Unpredictability is the name of life....but unpleasant unpredictability is what stirs one deeply....The mental torture you must have suffered has only made you stronger.....something the 'villains' of your life might find hard to digest....

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 9, 2016 at 6:52 AM

      The villains have remarkable digestive systems. They swallow anything from gods to crap...

      Delete
  5. tyatinNovember 13, 2016 at 5:40 PM

    You are a great writer with strong opinions

    ReplyDelete
  6. UnknownNovember 28, 2016 at 5:25 PM

    नोटबंदी के बाद डिजिटल पेमेंट पर जोर, जानें क्या है डिजिटल पेमेंट
    Readmore Todaynews18.com https://goo.gl/BgzxC9

    ReplyDelete

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
44 comments
Read more

Remedios the Beauty and Innocence

  Remedios the Beauty is a character in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude . Like most members of her family, she too belongs to solitude. But unlike others, she is very innocent too. Physically she is the most beautiful woman ever seen in Macondo, the place where the story of her family unfolds. Is that beauty a reflection of her innocence? Well, Marquez doesn’t suggest that explicitly. But there is an implication to that effect. Innocence does make people look charming. What else is the charm of children? Remedios’s beauty is dangerous, however. She is warned by her great grandmother, who is losing her eyesight, not to appear before men. The girl’s beauty coupled with her innocence will have disastrous effects on men. But Remedios is unaware of “her irreparable fate as a disturbing woman.” She is too innocent to know such things though she is an adult physically. Every time she appears before outsiders she causes a panic of exasperation. To make...
4 comments
Read more

The Death of Truth and a lot more

Susmesh Chandroth in his kitchen “Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought,” Poet Shelley told us long ago. I was reading an interview with a prominent Malayalam writer, Susmesh Chandroth, this morning when Shelley returned to my memory. Chandroth says he left Kerala because the state had too much of affluence which is not conducive for the production of good art and literature. He chose to live in Kolkata where there is the agony of existence and hence also its ecstasies. He’s right about Kerala’s affluence. The state has eradicated poverty except in some small tribal pockets. Today almost every family in Kerala has at least one person working abroad and sending dollars home making the state’s economy far better than that of most of its counterparts. You will find palatial houses in Kerala with hardly anyone living in them. People who live in some distant foreign land get mansions constructed back home though they may never intend to come and live here. There are ...
10 comments
Read more

The Covenant of Water

Book Review Title: The Covenant of Water Author: Abraham Verghese Publisher: Grove Press UK, 2023 Pages: 724 “What defines a family isn’t blood but the secrets they share.” This massive book explores the intricacies of human relationships with a plot that spans almost a century. The story begins in 1900 with 12-year-old Mariamma being wedded to a 40-year-old widower in whose family runs a curse: death by drowning. The story ends in 1977 with another Mariamma, the granddaughter of Mariamma the First who becomes Big Ammachi [grandmother]. A lot of things happen in the 700+ pages of the novel which has everything that one may expect from a popular novel: suspense, mystery, love, passion, power, vulnerability, and also some social and religious issues. The only setback, if it can be called that at all, is that too many people die in this novel. But then, when death by drowning is a curse in the family, we have to be prepared for many a burial. The Kerala of the pre-Independ...
14 comments
Read more

Koorumala Viewpoint

  Koorumala is at once reticent and coquettish. It is an emerging tourist spot in the Ernakulam district of Kerala. At an altitude of 169 metres from MSL, the viewpoint is about 40 km from Kochi. The final stretch of the road, about 2 km, is very narrow. It passes through lush green forest-looking topography. The drive itself is exhilarating. And finally you arrive at a 'Pay & Park' signboard on a rocky terrain. The land belongs to the CSI St Peter's Church. You park your vehicle there and walk up a concrete path which leads to a tiled walkway which in turn will take you the viewpoint. Below are some pictures of the place.  From the parking lot to the viewpoint The tiled walkway A selfie from near the view tower  A view from the tower Another view The tower and the rest mandap at the back Koorumala viewpoint is a recent addition to Kerala's tourist map. It's a 'cool' place for people of nearby areas to spend some leisure in splendid isolation from the hu...
30 comments
Read more