Skip to main content

A few quotes from myself

I wish to present a few quotes from my own book, Autumn Shadows. The purpose, obviously, is to tempt you to buy a copy of the book. Let me caution you that it is an e-book and it has no print version. 

Quotes:

Guilt is the very foundation of Christianity.  Man is a fallen creature, according to its theology.  The Bible begins with the Fall of Adam and Eve from divine grace.  The biblical history of mankind begins with an irate God who hurls curses on the first man and the first woman.  Having subordinated the woman to the man, God gifts her the severe pain of childbearing as a punishment for her sins.  He curses the whole ground on which Adam was to walk and work. Guilt is the very foundation of Christianity.  Man is a fallen creature, according to its theology.  The Bible begins with the Fall of Adam and Eve from divine grace.  The biblical history of mankind begins with an irate God who hurls curses on the first man and the first woman.  Having subordinated the woman to the man, God gifts her the severe pain of childbearing as a punishment for her sins.  He curses the whole ground on which Adam has to walk and work. [Chapter 3: A Rite of Passage]

*
However austere one may be, however strict one may be, there is a very human heart within. Ultimately, it is love that makes all the difference. All our intellect and rationality fail to bring us happiness and meaning in life. [Chapter 4: Stargazing]
*
What is destiny but a creation of our own deeds and misdeeds? [Chapter 9: The best of both worlds]
*
One of those nights I woke up drenched with sweat. The nightmare had taken me to Hell. Lucifer sat on a massive boulder holding a spear in his left hand while his right hand was pointed at me. His serrated tail rose behind him towering above his head with a pointed metallic arrow at its end. The hell-fire raged behind that.
“Why is this man here?” Lucifer asked the devils pointing at me. There was contempt in the fire that emanated from his eyes.
The devils were puzzled. “Where else would this evil soul go?” They seemed to ask.
“This man is too evil for my Hell. Take him away and throw him out.” [Chapter 14:  Sisyphus carries water]

*
During my second year at Carmel, I met with a scooter accident and was on leave for a month and a half from school. In the second month, a note was delivered personally at my home. It was from a student. “We all miss your lively presence,” it said, “and we want you to know that our best thoughts are with you. You are the best person we have ever known and we wish we had the magic to make you healthy. We don’t need a hero to make our days lively at school. We need you. We miss you and look forward to the day you come back.”
Such expressions of affection have not been rare at Carmel. And affection has no religion. [Chapter 20: Autumn Shadows]
***
You can order your copy here.
Go to Amazon

Comments

  1. Congratulations sir on this gargantuan achievement of finishing of a full-fledged book. Wish you all the success.

    ReplyDelete

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

The Art of Subjugation: A Case Study

Two Pulaya women, 1926 [Courtesy Mathrubhumi ] The Pulaya and Paraya communities were the original landowners in Kerala until the Brahmins arrived from the North with their religion and gods. They did not own the land individually; the lands belonged to the tribes. Then in the 8 th – 10 th centuries CE, the Brahmins known as Namboothiris in Kerala arrived and deceived the Pulayas and Parayas lock, stock, and barrel. With the help of religion. The Namboothiris proclaimed themselves the custodians of all wealth by divine mandate. They possessed the Vedic and Sanskrit mantras and tantras to prove their claims. The aboriginal people of Kerala couldn’t make head or tail of concepts such as Brahmadeya (land donated to Brahmins becoming sacred land) or Manu’s injunctions such as: “Land given to a Brahmin should never be taken back” [8.410] or “A king who confiscates land from Brahmins incurs sin” [8.394]. The Brahmins came, claimed certain powers given by the gods, and started exploi...

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...

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...

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...