Skip to main content

Friendship


Until someone from my Delhi days called me yesterday evening, I was not aware that it was friendship day (1st Sunday of August). I transferred the phone to Maggie as soon as he enquired after her. The call ended soon which was what I wanted. Friends – I’m scared of many them.

My experience with friends has been such that friendship is a nightmare for me with the exception of a few souls who don’t wait for friendship day to call. When a Catholic priest who was my teacher for a brief period extended friendship on Facebook recently, I accepted the offer with considerable hesitation. When he wrote on my page yesterday that he prayed for me I became really terrified and wrote in response that attention from religious people had always spelt disaster in my life.

I had my own perversions and idiosyncrasy which made me an outsider in any society. Most of those perversions were worked to their bizarre extremes by certain religious people who took it upon themselves to reform me. As a result of their missionary zeal and enterprise, I became a miserable wretch and quit the place altogether after enduring an ordeal that lasted half a decade. It was not just a place that I quit; I quit people. It was impossible for me to trust people anymore. In fact, the whole missionary enterprise damaged my personality so much that I couldn’t even sign my name without my hand shivering uncontrollably.

I have lived my life in relative solitude ever since though I have always greeted people at my workplace with the best possible smile on my lips. Beyond the greetings and smiles, friendships in general meant little for me.

Friendship is an attitude of openness and not the missionary zeal to reform people and mould them in your own image. As Fritz Perls said, “You are you, and I am I.” You and I have to live our own lives the way we deem it best. I may be wrong. Yet I have to live my life, not yours. I will learn my lessons through my wrongs. If you find my way unacceptable leave me and go your way. If we can meet on some mutually acceptable plane, that’s beautiful. Otherwise, it can’t be helped.

Once upon a time


Comments

  1. adityaAugust 6, 2018 at 8:40 PM

    Happy friendship day sir 😄.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownAugust 7, 2018 at 11:53 AM

    I couldn't agree more. In fact, I find it really funny when people even attempt to mould you! If everyone becomes your mirror image, would you find anything interesting or anything worth learning from that replica? It'll turn so boring! I like mingling with different people, who have an individuality :)
    Like the way you write Sir (y)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalAugust 7, 2018 at 12:23 PM

      Some people just can't accept others as they are. They have to reshape people according to their ideologies and beliefs. Look at what's happening in the country now. Aren't some people imposing their views, faiths and creeds on the entire nation? This is the problem with religious people.

      Glad to know you like my writing.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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
30 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
37 comments
Read more

William and the autumn of life

William and I were together only for one year, but our friendship has grown stronger year after year. The duration of that friendship is going to hit half a century. In the meanwhile both he and I changed many places. William was in Kerala when I was in Shillong. He was in Ireland when I was in Delhi. Now I am in Kerala where William is planning to migrate back. We were both novices of a religious congregation for one year at Kotagiri in Tamil Nadu. He was older than me by a few years and far more mature too. But we shared a cordial rapport which kept us in touch though we went in unexpected directions later. William’s conversations had the same pattern back then and now too. I’d call it Socratic. He questions a lot of things that you say with the intention of getting to the depth of the matter. The last conversation I had with him was when I decided to stop teaching. I mention this as an example of my conversations with William. “You are a good teacher. Why do you want to stop
15 comments
Read more

X the variable

X is the most versatile and hence a very precious entity in mathematics. Whenever there is an unknown quantity whose value has to be discovered, the mathematician begins with: Let the unknown quantity be x . This A2Z series presented a few personalities who played certain prominent roles in my life. They are not the only ones who touched my life, however. There are so many others, especially relatives, who left indelible marks on my psyche in many ways. I chose not to bring relatives into this series. Dealing with relatives is one of the most difficult jobs for me. I have failed in that task time and again. Miserably sometimes. When I think of relatives, O V Vijayan’s parable leaps to my mind. Father and little son are on a walk. “Be careful lest you fall,” father warns the boy. “What will happen if I fall?” The boy asks. The father’s answer is: “Relatives will laugh.” One of the harsh truths I have noticed as a teacher is that it is nearly impossible to teach your relatives – nephews
15 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
18 comments
Read more