Skip to main content

Valentine and Valmiki



“Happy Valentine’s Day, darling,” Socrates came home earlier than usual to greet his wife on love’s own day.

Xanthippe frowned.  “What’s wrong with you?  First of all, you come home leaving your real Valentines behind, your beloved disciples, I mean, and then you forget that we’re now living in Hindu-satan where Valentine is a phoren demon.”

“What’s in a name?” Socrates asked.  “Hindu-satan is just a counterpart of Paki-satan, names, just names.  My Plato will tell you that names are illusions thrice removed from the essence.”

“Plato is your real Valentine, isn’t he?” Xanthippe threw a sidelong glance at her husband.

“Plato was amused when they said that Valentine was a corruption of Valmiki,” Socrates said ignoring his wife’s insinuation about his relationship with Plato. What does she know about Platonic love?

“Valmiki?” Xanthippe’s eyebrows rose to form two mighty arches on her broad forehead where the greying hairline had begun to recede.

Source: Ma Nishada
“Yup.  You know the story, don’t you, about the bird couple making love when the hunter shot down the male bird.”

“Ma Nishada something.”  She had not learnt the divine language of their new country.

“Maa Nishada Pratistham Tvamagamahsāsvati Samaa / Yat raunchamithunaadekam Avadhi Kaamamohitam,” Socrates quoted Vamiki’s very first sloka, the primordial love song, the alpha of romance.  “Even animals should not be hurt when they are making love, being kaamamohitam, driven by kaama.  Would Valentine of Isai-satan ever say such a thing?”

Xanthippe was dismayed.  “So what they say about everything having its origin in Hindu-satan is true?”

“Well, there is nothing in the universe that is not in the epics of this great country, it seems.  Valmiki and Vyasa are the originators of all wisdom and technology, all, nothing less.”

“Oh! We’re so privileged to live in such a great country, my beloved Valentine.” She moved closer to her husband.

“Valmiki,” Socrates corrected her as he stretched out his arms to embrace her on Valentine’s, sorry, Valmiki’s day.


 PS. Happy Valmiki - I mean, Valentine Day - to all who can love. 



Comments

  1. JaiFebruary 14, 2018 at 7:17 PM

    Wonderfully written Sir ! This is what the goons in power have reduced a wonderful country to. Truly Hindu satanic...

    ReplyDelete
  2. NISHANTH CHALAMANAMELFebruary 14, 2018 at 9:16 PM

    If you try ......there will be another epic....sir

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anita SabatFebruary 15, 2018 at 7:42 PM

    Valmiki Day indeed :)
    Love knows no borders.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 15, 2018 at 7:48 PM

      The very first sloka of Valmiki Ramayana is a love song par excellence.

      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 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...
18 comments
Read more

Are human systems repressive?

Salma I had never heard of Salma until she was sent to the Rajya Sabha as a Member of the Parliament by Tamil Nadu a couple of weeks back and a Malayalam weekly featured her on the cover with an interview. Salma’s story made me think on the nature of certain human systems and organisations including religion. Salma was born Rajathi Samsudeen. Marriage made her Rukiya, because her husband’s family didn’t think of Rajathi as a Muslim name. Salma is the pseudonym she chose as a writer. Salma’s life was always controlled by one system or another. Her religion and its ruthlessly patriarchal conventions determined the crests and troughs of her life’s waves. Her schooling ended the day she chose to watch a movie with a friend, another girl whose education was stopped too. They were in class 9. When Rajathi protested that her cousin, a boy, was also watching the same movie at the same time in the same cinema hall, her mother’s answer was, “He’s a boy; boys can do anything.” Rajathi was...
12 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

Roles we Play

When I saw the above picture of Narendra Modi in the latest issue of India Today , what rushed to my mind instantly was a Malayalam film song Veshangal Janmangal … Life is a series of roles dressed up for the occasion. There are different costumes for celebrations and mourning, and there are people who can shed one and move into the other instantly. Are your smiles genuine? Do your tears mean sadness? Or, are they all costumes that suit the occasion? Are you just an actor who plays certain roles? Is the entire cosmos just a gigantic theatre for you? Where can we find the real you beneath all the costumes you keep changing day in and day out? Have you relinquished dharma in favour of cravings? Truth over expediency?  
10 comments
Read more