Skip to main content

Friends



An old friend of mine underwent angioplasty recently and I decided to visit him today. I asked Maggie to join me since she knew him and more since I loved company for the hour-long drive. The friend is a Catholic priest who was a classmate of mine for 6 years in the seminary. Let me call him S.

   Our conversation happened to graze religion and I mentioned that I was no church-goer. Maggie thought that the priest would find that scandalous. On the contrary, S asked, “What’s the use of going to church if that doesn’t make one a good person? I know a lot of people who attend church as a mere duty. If you are a good person doing good to others, it hardly matters whether you go to church or not.”

   “He has his own spirituality. He meditates.” Maggie offered.

   “What more do you want?” S asked. “God is not the private property of the church.”

   Maggie was neither shocked nor scandalised. Living with me had made her familiar with similar, if not much more radical, views.  I didn’t mention, however, that my meditations didn’t require even a god. My morality and my goodness (however whatever little that is) are founded on the pure logic that goodness is the foundation of healthy living.

   I recalled how a student of mine resorted to a small trick last year to get me along with Maggie to pray in the school’s prayer room during the lunch break. “Would you do something for me during the lunch break?” She had asked me. “Please,” she pleaded. “Why not?” I said without realising what she was up to. However, when she got Maggie to the prayer room I refused to accompany her because I had been assigned a duty by the coordinator. The student wouldn’t believe that I couldn’t take a minute off from that duty for her sake. She felt hurt more because I broke my promise to her than because I refused to join her in prayer. A few months later, however, she told a friend of hers that it didn’t matter whether I prayed or not because I was a good human being.

   “That’s all what matters,” said S. “And people always see through what you are whether you go to church or not.”

   Maggie understood that my friends, very few as they are, are indeed a different breed of people.


Comments

  1. wingsJune 25, 2018 at 10:04 AM

    It is easy to go to any temple or church or masjid or mausoleum and say prayers. Being good is an unattainable pinnacle for both believers and disbelievers. Most of the disbelievers are ideal and strive to be good. They are indeed spiritual.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJune 25, 2018 at 5:45 PM

      I have also noticed that non-believers tend to be better at heart. Probably, they think and act unlike believers who do what they like assuming the confessional or the Ganga or something like that will wash away their sins.

      Delete
  2. pushpendra dwivediJune 25, 2018 at 1:53 PM

    interesting story telling

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anagha YatinJune 25, 2018 at 2:38 PM

    I so agree that going to temples or churches or mosques doesnt make one spiritual or a good human being. Being true to ones work and self does. Work is worship. Clear conscious is the only mirror where one should see the reflection and not in the eyes of the others.
    A heartwarming story.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJune 25, 2018 at 5:46 PM

      Thank you for joining me here and endorsing my views on this topic. I too take work as worship. I too believe in keeping the conscience clear.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Break Your Barriers

  Guest Post Break Your Barriers : 10 Strategic Career Essentials to Grow in Value by Anu Sunil  A Review by Jose D. Maliekal SDB Anu Sunil’s Break Your Barriers is a refreshing guide for anyone seeking growth in life and work. It blends career strategy, personal philosophy, and practical management insights into a resource that speaks to educators, HR professionals, and leaders across both faith-based and secular settings. Having spent nearly four decades teaching philosophy and shaping human resources in Catholic seminaries, I found the book deeply enriching. Its central message is clear: most limitations are self-imposed, and imagination is the key to breaking through them. As the author reminds us, “The only limit to your success is your imagination.” The book’s strength lies in its transdisciplinary approach. It treats careers not just as jobs but as vocations, rooted in the dignity of labour and human development. Themes such as empathy, self-mastery, ethical le...
3 comments
Read more

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 music of an ageing man

Having entered the latter half of my sixties, I view each day as a bonus. People much younger become obituaries these days around me. That awareness helps me to sober down in spite of the youthful rush of blood in my indignant veins. Age hasn’t withered my indignation against injustice, fraudulence, and blatant human folly, much as I would like to withdraw from the ringside and watch the pugilism from a balcony seat with mellowed amusement. But my genes rage against my will. The one who warned me in my folly-ridden youth to be wary of my (anyone’s, for that matter) destiny-shaping character was farsighted. I failed to subdue the rages of my veins. I still fail. That’s how some people are, I console myself. So, at the crossroads of my sixties, I confess to a dismal lack of emotional maturity that should rightfully belong to my age. The problem is that the sociopolitical reality around me doesn’t help anyway to soothe my nerves. On the contrary, that reality is almost entirely re...
14 comments
Read more

Mahatma Ayyankali’s Relevance Today

About a year before he left for Chicago (1893), Swami Vivekananda visited Kerala and described the state (then Travancore-Cochin-Malabar princely states) as a “lunatic asylum.” The spiritual philosopher was shocked by the brutality of the caste system that was in practice in the region. The peasant caste of Pulayas , for example, had to keep a distance of 90 feet from Brahmins and 64 feet from Nairs. The low caste people were denied most human rights. They could not access education, enter temple premises, or buy essentials from markets. They were not even considered as humans. Ayyankali (1863-1941) was a Pulaya leader who emerged to confront the situation. I just finished reading a biography of his in Malayalam and was highly impressed by the contributions of the great man who came to be known in Kerala as the Mahatma of the Dalits . What prompted me to order a copy of the biography was an article I read in a Malayalam periodical last week. The article described how Ayyankali...
14 comments
Read more

The Irony of Hindutva in Nagaland

“But we hear you take heads up there.” “Oh, yes, we do,” he replied, and seizing a boy by the head, gave us in a quite harmless way an object-lesson how they did it.” The above conversation took place between Mary Mead Clark, an American missionary in British India, and a Naga tribesman, and is quoted in Clark’s book, A Corner in India (1907). Nagaland is a tiny state in the Northeast of India: just twice the size of the Lakhimpur Kheri district in Uttar Pradesh. In that little corner of India live people belonging to 16 (if not more) distinct tribes who speak more than 30 dialects. These tribes “defy a common nomenclature,” writes Hokishe Sema, former chief minister of the state, in his book, Emergence of Nagaland . Each tribe is quite unique as far as culture and social setups are concerned. Even in physique and appearance, they vary significantly. The Nagas don’t like the common label given to them by outsiders, according to Sema. Nagaland is only 0.5% of India in area. T...
12 comments
Read more