Skip to main content

Messing up Messiahs


Interfering with other people’s affairs seems to be a very common feature of the Indian culture.  The Sharmas cannot survive without finding out what is cooking in the Varmas’ kitchen and vice versa.  Worse, the Sharmas will not rest contented with poking their noses into the Varma tastes and flavours but insist on altering some of them.

Meddling with other people’s affairs, imposing our truths and notions on them, chipping away at others’ preferences and proclivities, moulding them according to our fancies is the most sickening aspect of existence in my country.  I have been a victim of this for most part of my life.  There was a dedicated group of people who wished to reshape my personality.  They took an inordinate interest in my affairs and started the chipping.  I must have looked like a gargoyle to them and they insisted on converting the gargoyle into a Galatea.  Nothing good came of it.  My life became a protracted agony which I endured – that’s all and nothing more.  I repeat, absolutely nothing good came of all the chipping they did. 

Wanting to be the Messiah in somebody’s life may be a noble wish in religions.  In actual life the cross is the best place for the Messiah.  If you are not happy with others save yourself from them by embracing your own cross.  Let others be.  There are thousands of religions in the world.  Millions of religious preachers.  Billions of prayers rise to the heavens every moment.  But the world has not become any better a place.  And it’s not going to be any better with all the gods and their chipping Messiahs. 

You can at best be an example by living your life as well as you please.  One good deed from you may inspire a gargoyle to smile instead of smirk. One good word can do far more than a thousand chisels when it comes to walking gargoyles. 

PS. Written for Indispire Edition 154. #LessonOfLife

 

Comments

  1. Exactly my feelings..thank you Tom sir for giving words to MY thoughts:)
    I couldn't have said it this beautifully!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Very true Tomichand Ji. I guess, this is a past time of no of people. Specially negative and sick people love doing this. I really loved your sentence - "a dedicated group of people who wished to reshape my personality."
    Actually, They try to do this with everyone except them self.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They are self-righteous. Others are wrong, according to them. Most such people have their pet gods too.

      Delete
  3. Will they ever realize they are 'meddlesome'? No - they will always think that they are our well-wishers....!!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. So true. If there is one story that is to be recited every morning, it should be about that man, boy, donkey and the villagers.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Gossiping is understandable. Self- anointed Messiahs go beyond that and ruin people...

      Delete
  5. Sir. my review on your book. http://www.manabhadradri.com/2017/01/the-nomad-learns-morality-review.html#links

    ReplyDelete
  6. Wenever I m juggling with something in my life.. Your blogs always give me clarity. Also it's a great prompt

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Glad to hear that Mansi.Juggling is unavoidable to a great extent anyway.

      Delete
  7. to create the interest of kid in study visit http://www.kidsfront.com/

    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

Shooting an Elephant

George Orwell [1903-1950] We had an anthology of classical essays as part of our undergrad English course. Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell was one of the essays. The horror of political hegemony is the core theme of the essay. Orwell was a subdivisional police officer of the British Empire in Burma (today Myanmar) when he was forced to shoot an elephant. The elephant had gone musth (an Urdu term for the temporary insanity of male elephants when they are in need of a female) and Orwell was asked to control the commotion created by the giant creature. By the time Orwell reached with his gun, the elephant had become normal. Yet Orwell shot it. The first bullet stunned the animal, the second made him waver, and Orwell had to empty the entire magazine into the elephant’s body in order to put an end to its mammoth suffering. “He was dying,” writes Orwell, “very slowly and in great agony, but in some world remote from me where not even a bullet could damage him further…. It seeme...

Urban Naxal

Fiction “We have to guard against the urban Naxals who are the biggest threat to the nation’s unity today,” the Prime Minister was saying on the TV. He was addressing an audience that stood a hundred metres away for security reasons. It was the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel which the Prime Minister had sanctified as National Unity Day. “In order to usurp the Sardar from the Congress,” Mathew said. The clarification was meant for Alice, his niece who had landed from London a couple of days back.    Mathew had retired a few months back as a lecturer in sociology from the University of Kerala. He was known for his radical leftist views. He would be what the PM calls an urban Naxal. Alice knew that. Her mother, Mathew’s sister, had told her all about her learned uncle’s “leftist perversions.” “Your uncle thinks that he is a Messiah of the masses,” Alice’s mother had warned her before she left for India on a short holiday. “Don’t let him infiltrate your brai...

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...

Nehru’s Secularism

Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, and Narendra Modi, the present one, are diametrically opposite to each other. Take any parameter, from boorishness to sophistication or religious views, and these two men would remain poles apart. Is it Nehru’s towering presence in history that intimidates Modi into hurling ceaseless allegations against him? Today, 14 Nov, is Nehru’s birth anniversary and Modi’s tweet was uncharacteristically terse. It said, “Tributes to former Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru Ji on the occasion of his birth anniversary.” Somebody posted a trenchant cartoon in the comments section.  Nehru had his flaws, no doubt. He was as human as Modi. But what made him a giant while Modi remains a dwarf – as in the cartoon above – is the way they viewed human beings. For Nehru, all human beings mattered, irrespective of their caste, creed, language, etc. His concept of secularism stands a billion notches above Modi’s Hindutva-nationalism. Nehru’s ide...