Skip to main content

Wings of Chances


The beaten tracks belong to the poor, tired, huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of teeming shores.1  Life’s thrills belong to those who trek on the Vesuvius.  To those whose ships dare the uncharted seas.2

Toe the line if you want to be the winner in athletics.  But there’s little fun running between lines, in circles, over again along the same track.  The dandelions flutter longing to be touched, beyond the tracks. 

The longing of dandelions will acquire wings and fly in search of new horizons. 

If only we could be dandelions.  With longings that grow wings.  We’d leave the beaten tracks and circular races.  We’d discover new horizons.  New ecstasies.

New truths. 

Personal truths are like wings.  They carry us above narrow considerations of nationalism and jingoism.  Above political games and religious terrors.  Far away from the jargon of gurus who enslave. 

Pick your chance.  And grow your wings. Let no shadow fall between the wing and the circle, between the flight and the ratrace.3

Notes:
1.     Inscription below the Statue of Liberty. 
2.     Friedrich Nietzsche
3.     T S Eliot: The Hollow Men

PS.  Written for Indispire Edition 155: #TakingChances

Comments

  1. UnknownFebruary 4, 2017 at 2:48 PM

    Absolutely true sir! But often these 'personal truths' ruin my spirit.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 4, 2017 at 3:02 PM

      It's not personal truths that ruin but their conflict with established systems.

      Delete
  2. sunaina sharmaFebruary 4, 2017 at 5:30 PM

    Poetic - dandelions grow beyond the tracks and not on the tracks - a thing to ponder over - there is imagination soaring high beyond that gate of rigid notions - we need to cross it - beautiful!!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 4, 2017 at 8:41 PM

      I'm leaving some beaten tracks, Sunaina, though I never ran on any as far as I think 😃😃😃

      Delete
  3. Kokila guptaFebruary 4, 2017 at 8:58 PM

    At times, stuck in the quagmire of dilemma, the tracks blur..to take new chances and rise like the proverbial Phoenix is the mantra and the only way.
    Wonderful post, sir!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 4, 2017 at 9:37 PM

      We get stuck in quagmire. Yes, Kokila, that's the tragedy. Worse is that our most beloved people create that quagmire.

      Delete
  4. Mary VargheseFebruary 4, 2017 at 11:04 PM

    Absolutely wonderful twist to mundane affairs! Love reading all your posts :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. UnknownFebruary 4, 2017 at 11:45 PM

    A lively warp to mundane life.. a great post Sir :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. negiFebruary 5, 2017 at 10:00 PM

    useful info about academics as well govt exams can be found on 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
44 comments
Read more

The Second Crucifixion

  ‘The Second Crucifixion’ is the title of the last chapter of Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins’s magnum opus Freedom at Midnight . The sub-heading is: ‘New Delhi, 30 January 1948’. Seventy-three years ago, on that day, a great soul was shot dead by a man who was driven by the darkness of hatred. Gandhi has just completed his usual prayer session. He had recited a prayer from the Gita:                         For certain is death for the born                         and certain is birth for the dead;                         Therefore over the inevitable                         Thou shalt not grieve . At that time Narayan Apte and Vishnu Karkare were moving to Retiring Room Number 6 at the Old Delhi railway station. They walked like thieves not wishing to be noticed by anyone. The early morning’s winter fog of Delhi gave them the required wrap. They found Nathuram Godse already awake in the retiring room. The three of them sat together and finalised the plot against Gand
6 comments
Read more

The Final Farewell

Book Review “ Death ends life, not a relationship ,” as Mitch Albom put it. That is why, we have so many rituals associated with death. Minakshi Dewan’s book, The Final Farewell [HarperCollins, 2023], is a well-researched book about those rituals. The book starts with an elaborate description of the Sikh rituals associated with death and cremation, before moving on to Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and finally Hinduism. After that, it’s all about the various traditions and related details of Hindu final rites. A few chapters are dedicated to the problems of widows in India, gender discrimination in the last rites, and the problem of unclaimed dead bodies. There is a chapter titled ‘Grieving Widows in Hindi Cinema’ too. Death and its rituals form an unusual theme for a book. Frankly, I don’t find the topic stimulating in any way. Obviously, I didn’t buy this book. It came to me as quite many other books do – for reasons of their own. I read the book finally, having shelv
10 comments
Read more

Cats and Love

No less a psychologist than Freud said that the “time spent with cats is never wasted.” I find time to spend with cats precisely for that reason. They are not easy to love, particularly if they are the country variety which are not quite tameable, and mine are those. What makes my love affair with my cats special is precisely their unwillingness to befriend me. They’d rather be in their own company. “In ancient time, cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this,” Terry Pratchett says. My cats haven’t, I’m sure. Pratchett knew what he was speaking about because he loved cats which appear frequently in his works. Pratchett’s cats love independence, very unlike dogs. Dogs come when you call them; cats take a message and get back to you as and when they please. I don’t have dogs. But my brother’s dogs visit us – Maggie and me – every evening. We give them something to eat and they love that. They spend time with us after eating. My cats just go away without even a look af
13 comments
Read more

Vultures and Religion

When vultures become extinct, why should a religion face a threat? “When the vultures died off, they stopped eating the bodies of Zoroastrians…” I was amused as I went on reading the book The Final Farewell by Minakshi Dewan. The book is about how the dead are dealt with by people of different religious persuasions. Dead people are quite useless, unless you love euphemism. Or, as they say, dead people tell no tales. In the end, we are all just stories made by people like the religious woman who wrote the epitaph for her atheist husband: “Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.” Zoroastrianism is a religion which converts death into a sordid tale by throwing the corpses of its believers to vultures. Death makes one impure, according to that religion. Well, I always thought, and still do, that life makes one impure. I have the support of Lord Buddha on that. Life is dukkha , said the Enlightened. That is, suffering, dissatisfaction and unease. Death is liberation
4 comments
Read more