Skip to main content

Innocence



One of my friends in the village narrated an interesting anecdote. He heard a villager pray to his god one day for a strong wind in the night so that one of the trees in his neighbour’s farm would fall. “That would give me firewood for a month,” the villager explained when questioned.

His neighbour is a very kind man who lets him take firewood whenever dry branches of trees fall in the farm. “But why don’t you ask your god to solve your problem without wishing harm for your kind neighbour?” My friend questioned the villager who knew the neighbour too.

The villager said, “That’s true. I never thought of that.”

The villager was quite innocent. He really didn’t mean harm to his neighbour whom he held in high regard. But his firewood was running out and winds were quite common in the area and the winds brought down branches of trees frequently. It was only fair to ask god to send a wind in the nearest farm. It would be easier to carry the firewood home from the nearest farm. He wasn’t wishing any evil for anyone.

“Maybe the guy is not so innocent,” I suggested when my friend related this to me. “Maybe he knew his god was not magnanimous enough to perform some outlandish miracle.” A wind is not much of a miracle here.

My friend who is familiar with my cynicism even about gods laughed. “Of course, it is more sensible to pray for what can really happen. After all, winds are regular phenomena here. But the guy who prayed is really innocent. Innocence is limited imagination.”

“True,” I said. “Children are innocent precisely because their imagination is limited to the here and now. They don’t worry about the future, about what others think, or even about their own impishness.”

He liked that last part. “Let me absorb that,” he said. “The loss of the delusion that you like yourself is the real end of innocence, right?”

I couldn’t have put it better. I raised a toast to my friend’s wisdom. “I lost my innocence as a little child,” I said as I raised the glass merrily to my lips.

“Hmm,” he made a grimace. “And you lost your virginity in the library. Cheers.”





Comments

  1. The Moon's BOYFRIEND August 5, 2020 at 11:02 PM

    😆 I liked the way you defined innocence, I guess other emotions like vengeance and cruelty may also come under the same definition.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalAugust 6, 2020 at 7:28 AM

      Yes, Tony, and I'm glad this post made you think of that. Most evils betray an inhuman lack of imagination. I have quoted author Francois Mauriac many times in our class: God is able to tolerate human beings because he understands. God possesses the imagination to understand what is happening and what will happen. Hence God cannot be innocent. But God tolerates. Imagination helps us do that precisely: understand and tolerate. Where there is understanding and tolerance there won't be vengeance and cruelty.

      Thanks for making me say all these.

      Delete
  2. CEEcretsAugust 6, 2020 at 10:37 PM

    Helpful article. CEEcrets App is the best place to share secrets anonymously without using your name.

    ReplyDelete
  3. 24entJanuary 27, 2021 at 12:30 PM

    Nice informative information. Share my Stories with amazing entertainment. Just check it out it might help you.

    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

Whose Rama?

Book Review Title: Whose Rama? [Malayalam] Author: T S Syamkumar Publisher: D C Books, Kerala Pages: 352 Rama may be an incarnation of God Vishnu, but is he as noble a man [ Maryada Purushottam ] as he is projected to be by certain sections of Hindus? This is the theme of Dr Syamkumar’s book, written in Malayalam. There is no English translation available yet. Rama is a creation of the Brahmins, asserts the author of this book. The Ramayana upholds the unjust caste system created by Brahmins for their own wellbeing. Everyone else exists for the sake of the Brahmin wellbeing. If the Kshatriyas are given the role of rulers, it is only because the Brahmins need such men to fight and die for them. Valmiki’s Rama too upheld that unjust system merely because that was his Kshatriya-dharma, allotted by the Brahmins. One of the many evils that Valmiki’s Rama perpetrates heartlessly is the killing of Shambuka, a boy who belonged to a low caste but chose to become an ascetic. The...
8 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

In this Wonderland

I didn’t write anything in the last few days. Nor did I feel any urge to write. I don’t know if this lack of interest to write is what’s called writer’s block. Or is it simple disenchantment with whatever is happening around me? We’re living in a time that offers much, too much, to writers. The whole world looks like a complex plot for a gigantic epic. The line between truth and fiction has disappeared. Mass murders have become no-news. Animals get more compassion than fellow human beings. Even their excreta are venerated! Folk tales are presented as scientific truths while scientific truths are sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. When the young generation in Nepal set fire to their Parliament and Supreme Court buildings, they were making an unmistakable statement: that they are sick of their political leaders and their systems. Is there any country whose leaders don’t sicken their citizens? I’m just wondering. Maybe, there are good leaders still left in a few coun...
12 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