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
44 comments
Read more

Ashwatthama is still alive

Fiction Image from Pinterest “I met Ashwatthama.” When Doctor Prabhakar told me this, I thought he was talking figuratively. Metaphors were his weaknesses. “The real virus is in the human heart, Jai,” he had told me when the pandemic named Covid-19 started holding the country hostage. I thought his Ashwatthama was similarly figurative. Ashwatthama was Dronacharya’s son in the Mahabharata. He was blessed with immortality by Shiva. But the blessing became a horrible curse when Krishna punished him for killing the Pandava kids deceptively after Kurukshetra was brought to peace, however fragile that peace was, using all the frauds that a god could possibly use. Krishna of the Kurukshetra was no less a fraud than a run-of-the-mill politician in my imagination. He could get an innocent elephant named Ashwatthama killed and then convert that killing into a blatant lie to demoralise Drona. He could ask Bhima to hit Duryodhana below the belt without feeling any moral qualms in what
7 comments
Read more

Do I Dare?

Alfred Prufrock was sitting in a dimly lit café when a young boy, who was yet to reach adolescence, walked in. The boy looked as inquisitive as Prufrock looked flurried. ‘Hello,’ the boy said. ‘You look so… lonely. And sad too.’ ‘Sad? No, not sad. Just… contemplating. I am, as they say, measuring out my life with coffee spoons.’ ‘Aw! That’s strange. On my planet, I measure things by sunsets. I love sunsets. How can you measure life with something so small as a coffee spoon?’ ‘Did you say “my planet”?’ ‘Well, yes. I come from another planet. I’ve been travelling for quite some time, you know. Went to numerous planets and asteroids and met many strange creatures. Quite a lot of them are cranky.’ The boy laughed gently, almost like an adult. Prufrock looked at the boy with some scepticism and suspicion. He was already having too many worries of his own like whether he should part his hair in the middle and roll up the bottoms of his trousers. ‘They call me Little Prince,’
16 comments
Read more

Live Life Fully

Alexis Zorba, the protagonist of Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel Zorba the Greek , lives life to its fullness. He embraces human experience with his whole heart. He is not interested in rational explanations and intellectual isms. His philosophy, if you can call it that at all, is earthy, spontaneous and passionate. He loves life passionately. He celebrates it. Happiness is a simple affair for him. “I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing happiness is,” he tells us. “A glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else.” You don’t need a lot of things to be happy. Your possessions don’t bring you happiness. All that money you spent on your big house, big car, big everything… It helps to show off. But happiness? No way, happiness doesn’t come that way at all. Zorba loves to play his musical instrument, santouri. He loves to sing. To dance. But don’t get me wrong. He works too. He works hard. There’s no fullness of life without that hard w
10 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
15 comments
Read more