Skip to main content

Lethargy



I am educated enough to talk myself out of any work. Why write when there are more writers today than readers? I ask myself when I feel lethargic to write. Or I’ll invent other excuses. Like: you’ve grown old, man, you’re out of touch with new trends. Sometimes I feel like Santiago of The Old Man and the Sea: “Bed is my friend. Just bed…. Bed will be a great thing.”
One of the movie maestros of Kerala, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, complained the other day that the digital camera has made almost everyone a movie director. He lamented the death of movie as an art. Sometimes I feel like Adoor and lament the death of standard in blogging.
Have we created an art out of mediocrity? I think we have. Look at the best sellers today.
But that’s no excuse for avoiding your duty. You have to do your job whatever the outcome. Didn’t Krishna say something like that to Arjuna? According to the religion I inherited at birth, lethargy is one of the seven deadly sins. Diligence is prescribed as its antidote.
Right now I’m in no mood for diligence. Let me relax now just for the heck of it. I’m tired too. I don’t need other excuses now. This weariness today is not lethargy. It’s just weariness which needs a good sleep. I shall wake up early as usual tomorrow. “Why do old men wake so early? Is it to have one longer day?” Well, tomorrow I shall follow the example of Santiago and push my boat out into the ocean with renewed vigour.

Comments

  1. Replies
    1. None can dam the sallying brook at the mountain top.
      The gushing spring of water, no nature's force can stop.
      Let the musings of thy heart water the plain souls with a soft plop.

      Delete
    2. Looks like someone can undam the brook in the hills.

      Delete
  2. Not that old to stop writing...u r still the youngest of all teachers I know

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Heart doesn't grow old. The turtle heart beats for half an hour after it is killed.

      Delete
  3. Of course I know you won't quit. Of course I know you won't sleep till you find the fish. I have been following you since long. Waiting for your novel.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I won't quit. I grappled with the feelings and the next post will come tonight itself.

      The novel is almost ready. The last chapter is taking time.

      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

The Veiled Women

One of the controversies that has been raging in Kerala for quite some time now is about a girl student’s decision to wear the hijab to school. The school run by Christian nuns did not appreciate the girl’s choice of religious identity over the school uniform and punished her by making her stand outside the classroom. The matter was taken up immediately by a fundamentalist Muslim organisation (SDPI) which created the usual sound and fury on the campus as well as outside. Kerala is a liberal state in which Hindus (55%), Muslims (27%), and Christians (18%) have been living in fair though superficial harmony even after Modi’s BJP with its cantankerous exclusivism assumed power in Delhi. Maybe, Modi created much insecurity feeling among the Muslims in Kerala too resulting in some reactionary moves like the hijab mentioned above. The school could have handled it diplomatically given the general nature of Muslims which is not quite amenable to sense and sensibility. From the time I shi...

Insecurity and Exclusivism

“ Hindu khatare mein hai.” This was one of the first slogans that accompanied the emergence of Narendra Modi on the national scene. It means Hindus are in Danger . It reveals a deep-rooted feeling of insecurity. Hindus constitute an overwhelming majority in India – 80%. All the high positions in governance, judiciary, academics, any significant place, are occupied by Hindus. Yet the slogan was born. Strange? It will be facile to argue that Modi used this slogan and its concomitant hatred of Muslims and Christians as a political weapon for winning votes. True, he was successful in that; he rose to the highest political post in the country using minority-bashing. But the hatred did not end with that achievement; rather it spread outward and became more exclusive. Muslim and European rulers of India were booted out from the country’s history books and wherever else possible like the names of roads and institutions. With vengeance. Now there is a concerted effort going on to place In...

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...

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...