Skip to main content

Lizard’s Gospel


Fiction

It was when the coronavirus disease had forced Ravindran to stay at home day and night that he began to understand the language of the lizards. The lizards were there all over the house ever since the house was built nearly two decades ago. Less than two decades, in fact. It wasn’t easy to forget the year.

Lizards shared the house with Ravindran right from the time he built the house. They behaved as if they were the real masters of the house. Not that they made much noise about it; they were usually quiet. Once in a while they would let out a cry, a click, or a squeak. Krishnan, one of the oldest men in the village, once told Ravindran that the sounds made by lizards have specific meanings. The meaning depends on the time and direction, he said. What time of the day or night and from which direction – east, west, etc. Ravindran dismissed Krishnan’s theory as mere superstition of an ignorant villager.

Now he understands the language of the lizards. They are saying that they are the real owners of the house. Of the earth. Ravindran is just a parasite here. A parasite that destroys the earth with filth of all sorts. As if to show their contempt for Ravindran, the lizards left their shit all over: on windowsills, shelves, behind the elegant art pieces mounted on the walls, just anywhere and everywhere. On the face of the wall clock, on the set top box of the TV, nothing was sacred to the lizards apparently.

Ravindran was a teacher in Gujarat for many years. He taught English language and literature in the senior secondary section of a reputed school in Ahmedabad. Literature is life, literature is love, he would chant every now and then to his young students who loved his passion for life and love.

Nothing can take the place of love. That was Ravindran’s fundamental philosophy. Not even gods. Especially gods that want your worship. If you want to be called by a thousand names and offered bhajans and aartis, what are you but a snivelling beggar? No, my dear boys and girls, there is no god but the love you can carry in your heart. The tenderness you feel for the guy sitting next to you, for the stranger you meet on the road as you walk back home after school, for the beggar in the city square, that tenderness is the only god worth having.

That god of Ravindran died a thousand deaths on the streets outside his school and residence after a train was set ablaze by some hooligans in Godhra. People chanting god’s name drove long knives into the hearts of their fellow beings. People chanting god’s name raped women as if it was a religious ritual and tossed little children into fathomless abysses.

Jai Sri Ram! The slogan rattled Ravindran. It was uttered by one of his own students who was tearing apart a girl’s clothes. The girl was his own classmate. Ravindran ran to rescue the girl. When he regained his consciousness, he was in a hospital bed. Helpless. Unable even to feel tenderness.

He quit the job and the place and returned to his village in Kerala. He shared home with lizards.

He cleaned lizard droppings every morning like a religious ritual. I have encroached your space, forgive me. He sought forgiveness from the lizards. They clicked or squeaked. The time didn’t matter. Nor did the direction. Ravindran understood the meaning of those clicks and squeaks. They were the real gospels. He knew.



Comments

  1. I have families of lizards at my place. I observe them quite often and know where each of them live and can tell one from the other. Ravindran is probably right, it does seem to be more of their territory than ours.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's interesting. I thought I was one of those dimwits who took interest in lizards. But then I always had an inkling that you were quite different from the normal sort :)

      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 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...

India in Modi-Trap

That’s like harnessing a telescope to a Vedic chant and expecting the stars to spin closer. Illustration by Gemini AI A friend forwarded a WhatsApp message written by K Sahadevan, Malayalam writer and social activist. The central theme is a concern for science education and research in India. The writer bemoans the fact that in India science is in a prison conjured up by Narendra Modi. The message shocked me. I hadn’t been aware of many things mentioned therein. Modi is making use of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s Centre for Study and Research in Indology for his nefarious purposes projected as efforts to “preserve and promote classical Indian knowledge systems [IKS]” which include Sanskrit, Ayurveda, Jyotisha (astrology), literature, philosophy, and ancient sciences and technology. The objective is to integrate science with spirituality and cultural values. That’s like harnessing a telescope to a Vedic chant and expecting the stars to spin closer. The IKS curricula have made umpteen r...

Two Women and Their Frustrations

Illustration by Gemini AI Nora and Millie are two unforgettable women in literature. Both are frustrated with their married life, though Nora’s frustration is a late experience. How they deal with their personal situations is worth a deep study. One redeems herself while the other destroys herself as well as her husband. Nora is the protagonist of Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House , and Millie is her counterpart in Terence Rattigan’s play, The Browning Version . [The links take you to the respective text.] Personal frustration leads one to growth into an enlightened selfhood while it embitters the other. Nora’s story is emancipatory and Millie’s is destructive. Nora questions patriarchal oppression and liberates herself from it with equanimity, while Millie is trapped in a meaningless relationship. Since I have summarised these plays in earlier posts, now I’m moving on to a discussion on the enlightening contrasts between these two characters. If you’re interested in the plot ...

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...