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

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

The Vegetarian

Book Review Title: The Vegetarian Author: Han Kang Translator: Deborah Smith [from Korean] Publisher: Granta, London, 2018 Pages: 183 Insanity can provide infinite opportunities to a novelist. The protagonist of Nobel laureate Han Kang’s Booker-winner novel, The Vegetarian , thinks of herself as a tree. One can argue with ample logic and conviction that trees are far better than humans. “Trees are like brothers and sisters,” Yeong-hye, the protagonist, says. She identifies herself with the trees and turns vegetarian one day. Worse, she gives up all food eventually. Of course, she ends up in a mental hospital. The Vegetarian tells Yeong-hye’s tragic story on the surface. Below that surface, it raises too many questions that leave us pondering deeply. What does it mean to be human? Must humanity always entail violence? Is madness a form of truth, a more profound truth than sanity’s wisdom? In the disturbing world of this novel, trees represent peace, stillness, and nonviol...
7 comments
Read more

The RSS does not exist

An organisation that has 80,000 branches in India does not exist legally in any document. This is the cover story of The Caravan this month. By the way, The Caravan is one of the very few publications that still continues to exist in spite of being overtly critical of Narendra Modi and his Sangh Parivar. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is not registered as an organisation under any of the usual Indian registration laws such as the Societies Registration Act or as a trust or company. It functions as an unregistered voluntary organisation, though it is arguably the largest public organisation in the country. This situation makes the organisation absolutely unaccountable to anyone, argues The Caravan . The RSS is not legally required to file annual returns to the Tax department or disclose its financial details publicly though it deals with thousands of crores of rupees every year especially after Modi became the Prime Minister of the country. The membership of the organisat...
12 comments
Read more

No Problems Only Opportunities

You’ve probably heard this joke. A young man walked into his office one morning and found a beautiful young lady sitting in his chair. He called the MD and said, “Sir, I have a problem.” The MD replied, “Don’t you know our company’s motto, young man? No Problems, Only Opportunities .” When Suchita of The Blogchatter sent me a mail with the topic of this week’s blog hop –  - the first thing that came to my mind was the above joke. I know many people – too many, in fact – who went through terrible problems. My own life was a series of problems in none of which was there the consolation of any beautiful woman. One essential lesson I learnt from life is that life is a series of problems. You solve one and then arises the next one. Now I have reached an age when problems are no more problems: they are life itself. If you ask me what was the biggest problem I ever dealt with, it was my last years in Shillong. I was a lecturer in a college drawing a fat salary stipulated by the U...
13 comments
Read more