Interpretations matter

In Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s classical book, The Little Prince, a fox shares a secret with the eponymous prince in return for a favour from the prince. “And now here is my secret,” says the fox, “a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

The favour that the fox wanted from the prince was to be tamed. “Tame me,” the fox requested. The prince didn’t know what taming was. Taming means “to establish ties,” explains the fox. It is relationships that make any entity unique. There are flowers and flowers, for example. But all those flowers mean nothing to you unless you establish a “tie” with one or more of them. “It is the time you wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important,” the fox counsels.

The fox doesn’t like the system he has to follow. He has to hunt chickens of human beings, and human beings hunt him. That is the fact. He would like to reinterpret that fact. He would like to create a new reality, one that is based on relationships, one in which creatures will see with their hearts.

When I suggested philosopher Nietzsche’s quote, “There are no facts, only interpretations,” for Indispire Edition 300, I had this fox in mind. Of course, the quote is not to be taken literally. It requires interpretation. There are facts and facts. And we can’t live without them. But what matters more is how you interpret those facts. At least quite many of them.

For example, until recently Mahatma Gandhi was the father of the nation and Nathuram Godse was his killer. Such ‘facts’ are being reinterpreted these days. Gandhi is being evicted from the venerable position and his killer is being deified. Odisha government recently distributed a booklet in the state’s schools during the 150^th birth anniversary of the Mahatma. The booklet claimed that “Gandhiji died … because of an accidental sequence of events.” That is going far beyond interpretation of a fact: it is a grotesque distortion of the fact, something which the present ruling party in India is specialising on.

Misinterpretations and distortions of facts abound in India now. It happens because too many Indians now fail to see with their hearts. Eminent institutions of the country including the judiciary are afflicted by this malady of not being able to exercise the heart.

India is fast becoming a dark subcontinent because of that malady. It is imperative now to reverse its gravitation towards dark deeps. One way of doing that is to follow the above fox’s counsel.

PS. Written for Indispire Edition 300: #NoFacts

Comments

The Ghost of a Banyan Tree

Image from here Fiction Jaichander Varma could not sleep. It was past midnight and the world outside Jaichander Varma’s room was fairly quiet because he lived sufficiently far away from the city. Though that entailed a tedious journey to his work and back, Mr Varma was happy with his residence because it afforded him the luxury of peaceful and pure air. The city is good, no doubt. Especially after Mr Modi became the Prime Minister, the city was the best place with so much vikas. ‘Where’s vikas?’ Someone asked Mr Varma once. Mr Varma was offended. ‘You’re a bloody antinational mussalman who should be living in Pakistan ya kabristan,’ Mr Varma told him bluntly. Mr Varma was a proud Indian which means he was a Hindu Brahmin. He believed that all others – that is, non-Brahmins – should go to their respective countries of belonging. All Muslims should go to Pakistan and Christians to Rome (or is it Italy? Whatever. Get out of Bharat Mata, that’s all.) The lower caste Hindus co...

Tanishq and the Patriots

Patriots are a queer lot. You don’t know what all things can make them pick up the gun. Only one thing is certain apparently: the gun for anything. When the neighbouring country behaves like a hoard of bandicoots digging into our national borders, we will naturally take up the gun. But nowadays we choose to redraw certain lines on the map and then proclaim that not an inch of land has been lost. On the other hand, when a jewellery company brings out an ad promoting harmony between the majority and the minority populations, our patriots take up the gun. And shoot down the ad. Those who promote communal harmony are traitors in India today. The sacred duty of the genuine Indian patriot is to hate certain communities, rape their women, plunder their land, deny them education and other fundamental rights and basic requirements. Tanishq withdrew the ad that sought to promote communal harmony. The patriot’s gun won. Aapka Bharat Mahan. In the novel Black Hole which I’m writing there is...

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 Circus called Politics

Illustration by ChatGPT I have/had many students whose parents are teachers in schools run or aided by the government. These teachers don’t send their own children to their own schools where education is free. They send their children to private schools like the one where I’ve been working. They pay huge fees to teach their children in schools where teachers are paid half of or less than their salaries. This is one of the many ironies about the Kerala society. An article in yesterday’s The Hindu [ A deeper meaning of declining school enrolment ] takes an insightful look at some of the glaring social issues in Kerala’s educational system. One such issue is the rapidly declining student enrolment in government and aided schools in the state. The private schools in the state, on the other hand, are getting more students. People don’t want to send their children to the schools run by the government systems. The chief reason is that the medium of instruction is Malayalam. The second ...

The Harpist by the River

Preface One of the songs that has haunted me all along is By the Rivers of Babylon by Boney M [1978]. It is inspired by the biblical Psalm 137. The Psalm was written after the Babylonian King, Nebuchadnezzar II, conquered the kingdom of Judah and destroyed their most sacred temple in Jerusalem. The Jews were soon exiled to Babylon. Then some Babylonians asked the Jews to sing songs for them. Psalm 137 is a response to that: “How can we sing the Lord’s song in an alien land?” There is profound sorrow in the psalm. Exile and longing for homeland, oppression by enemies, and loss of identity are dominant themes. Boney M succeeded in carrying all those deep emotions and pain in their verses too. As I was wondering what to write for today’s #WriteAPageADay challenge, Boney M’s version of Psalm 137 wafted into my consciousness from the darkness and silence outside my bedroom long before daybreak. How to make it make sense to a reader of today who may know nothing about the Jewish exile ...

Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Search This Blog