Skip to main content

Cracks in the forts

Orchha 2015


I live alone with my wife. This solitude is my choice because other people make me feel intimidated. There are rare exceptions, of course. This is about those exceptions. They are not many. Just one here and another there. That’s all.

Most people I come across look like impenetrable fortresses. They are solid people. They know how to handle situations, what to say and what not to, when to smile, and so on. I am infinitely clumsy in comparison. I feel awkward and out of place wherever there are people. Except a few people.

Those few exceptions are people with cracks in their fortresses. They look happy by and large but there is an undercurrent of sadness somewhere in the depth of their being which they don’t let others see. They don’t laugh boisterously. But they don’t weep either. They smile a lot. And you can see a shade of sorrow running along the contours of their smiles.

They are not the wind that bends the reeds; they are the breeze that caresses the blooms.
They are not the waves that rage in rising tides; they are the ripples that murmur in tender lakes.
They are ready to accompany you in the dark tunnel you are passing through.
They are not scared of the dark, your dark side. They are conscious of the darkness within them.
The gaping holes in your heart don’t terrify them; they let you see the cracks in their forts.


For copies, click here

xZx

Comments

  1. DashyJune 11, 2020 at 5:00 PM

    Perfection is intimidating and imperfection is comforting. I agree to that. Beautiful lines. ❤️

    ReplyDelete
  2. Pranju chakrapaniJune 12, 2020 at 11:01 PM

    This is exactly the kind of post that makes me a reader of your blog. Honest.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Renu VyasJune 13, 2020 at 7:01 AM

    Sometimes, you write what I feel :) I can totally relate to this post being a loner..a kind of social misfit. There are a handful of people that I can really talk to and I'm happy with the way that I am..

    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
47 comments
Read more

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...
13 comments
Read more

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...
16 comments
Read more

You Don’t Know the Sky

I asked the bird to lend me wings. I longed to fly like her. Gracefully. She tilted her head and said, “Wings won’t be of any use to you because you don’t know the sky.” And she flew away. Into the sky. For a moment, I was offended. What arrogance! Does she think she owns the sky? As I watched the bird soar effortlessly into the blue vastness, I began to see what she meant. I wanted wings, not the flight. Like wanting freedom without the responsibility that comes with it. The bird had earned her wings. Through storms, through hunger, through braving the odds. She manoeuvred her way among the missiles that flew between invisible borders erected by us humans. She witnessed the macabre dance of death that brought down cities, laid waste a whole country. Wings are about more than flights. How often have you perched on the stump of a massive tree brought down by a falling warhead and wept looking at the debris of civilisations? The language of the sky is different from tha...
13 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...
19 comments
Read more