Skip to main content

Broken Things



I have always been attracted to broken things.  Not that I could ever mend them.  I am poor at that sort of jobs.  In fact, I’m bad at anything practical.  I can read books and at best teach them to impressionable young people.  Nothing more.  If there is a leaking tap at home, I have to depend on a plumber.  I won’t even be able to replace a punctured tyre of my car without somebody’s assistance.

But broken things enchant me. When I was 18 years old a classmate of mine quoted the catchphrase of Fevikwik in a speech: “Fixes everything except broken hearts.” I was stuck to that phrase for years.  [I think it was Fevikwik, I’m not sure.]

People came and went in my life breaking hearts. Not mine; I have no heart, they say.  They broke the hearts of each other.  I saw people sitting by the shore of a weeping river and gathering the fragments of their broken hearts.  I saw them piecing the fragments together. 

I broke somebody’s heart recently.  With just a statement.  It was a silly joke actually.  Hearts are extremely fragile, I learnt.  I learnt to guard my jokes.  A costly lesson.  I lost one of my best friends.

I wish I could heal hearts.  I wish I did not love broken things so much.



Comments

  1. Kokila guptaFebruary 13, 2018 at 2:03 PM

    Sad. Specially because it can be fixed not, healed.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. जितेन्द्र माथुरFebruary 13, 2018 at 2:12 PM

      I agree Kokila Ji that it can't be (completely) healed. Even then the hurting person (being a sensitive one) should try to heal it after realizing his / her aberration.

      Delete
    2. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 13, 2018 at 4:39 PM

      It can be fixed, not healed, yes. I fixed it, in fact. But certain scars always glare at you.

      Delete
  2. जितेन्द्र माथुरFebruary 13, 2018 at 2:04 PM

    Hearty thanks for sharing this post which I can definitely relate to. I personally consider breaking someone's heart is an unparalleled sin which if done deliberately without any sense of repentance, should never be forgiven. And if such person, after doing so inadvertently, realizes it later on, he / she should take the penitentiary action as soon as possible. I wish, I could heal all the heartburns and heartaches which were caused by my actions / omissions.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 13, 2018 at 4:40 PM

      Deliberate hurts are inflicted by absolutely heartless people. I hope I don't belong there. No, I don't. I am sensitive. I go out of my way to mend the hurts.

      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
37 comments
Read more

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let
36 comments
Read more

Everything is Politics

Politics begins to contaminate everything like an epidemic when ideology dies. Death of ideology is the most glaring fault line on the rock of present Indian democracy. Before the present regime took charge of the country, political parties were driven by certain underlying ideologies though corruption was on the rise from Indira Gandhi’s time onwards. Mahatma Gandhi’s ideology was rooted in nonviolence. Nothing could shake the Mahatma’s faith in that ideal. Nehru was a staunch secularist who longed to make India a nation of rational people who will reap the abundant benefits proffered by science and technology. Even the violent left parties had the ideal of socialism to guide them. The most heartless political theory of globalisation was driven by the ideology of wealth-creation for all. When there is no ideology whatever, politics of the foulest kind begins to corrode the very soul of the nation. And that is precisely what is happening to present India. Everything is politics
14 comments
Read more

Zorba’s Wisdom

Zorba is the protagonist of Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel Zorba the Greek . I fell in love with Zorba the very first time I read the novel. That must have been in my late 20s. I read the novel again after many years. And again a few years ago. I loved listening to Zorba play his santuri . I danced with him on the Cretan beaches. I loved the devil inside Zorba. I called that devil Tomichan. Zorba tells us the story of a monk who lived on Mount Athos. Father Lavrentio. This monk believed that a devil named Hodja resided in him making him do all wrong things. Hodja wants to eat meet on Good Friday, Hodja wants to sleep with a woman, Hodja wants to kill the Abbot… The monk put the blame for all his evil thoughts and deeds on Hodja. “I’ve a kind of devil inside me, too, boss, and I call him Zorba!” Zorba says. I met my devil in Zorba. And I learnt to call it Tomichan. I was as passionate as Zorba was. I enjoyed life exuberantly. As much as I was allowed to, at least. The plain truth is
19 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
13 comments
Read more