Skip to main content

From Camus's Absurdity to Zorba's Santuri


 Life is a mystery to be experienced, not a puzzle to be solved. However, experiences can be terrible and terrifying more often than not. Life is not a fair game. It's a rugby of bullies. It turns a deadly battleground occasionally. Nevertheless, it has its music, its moments of awe, its sweet orgasms. 

I'm participating in this year's A2Z Challenge thrown by Blogchatter just for the fun of writing something non-political and possibly more exciting if not inspiring than politics. Life is the theme. But life is too vast a topic for a blogger to handle. Life is an infinite and eternal ocean with relentless waves and winds, as well as corals and pearls. A blogger can at best look at a tiny fraction of that infinity, that eternity. And I'm gonna do just that. 

The series is tentatively titled From Camus's Absurdity to Zorba's Santuri. It is going to take a deep look (as deep as a blogger can go, of course) into life's ocean starting with its absurdities. We'll move through such phenomena as the bandwagon effect, fictional finalism, Kafka's prison, serendipity, utopian chimeras, to the secret of Zorba's happiness. 

I said it was going to be "non-political". Well, can you really discuss life without touching upon politics? Isn't politics an integral part of the game called life? Isn't it politics that makes life the misery that it often is? Isn't our entire history from the most ancient civilisations onward about our kings and their henchmen? Do the workers who actually built the monuments and mausoleums find a mention anywhere in your history books? 

April won't be political anyway - not too obviously, at least. I shall try my best to keep politics away with a barge pole. I hope April will engage you meaningfully here in this space and thanks to Blogchatter team for their support. 

PS. I participated in this programme last year too and the result is still available as a free e-book titled Great Books for Great Thoughts. 


Comments

  1. Amit MisraMarch 17, 2021 at 12:36 PM

    In politics, I feel that 'the more things change, the more they remain the same'. It does not work on rules, ethics or anything deeper, I suppose. Personally, I could not learn anything worthwhile from political discussion, in spite of being a native of the state (U.P.) where politics and political discussion is the primary occupation of nearly everyone.

    Nevertheless, I read your each and every composition, whether political or non-political. All your commentaries carry a fresh and new perspective to the concept. And personally I am an admirer of your non-political compositions -- there is so much to learn and discover there. They are my all time favourites.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 17, 2021 at 8:45 PM

      I'm excited by this comment coming from an eminent scholar. Glad you expressed it so openly.

      I don't enjoy writing politics. I don't usually discuss it with people either. There's something detestable about it. Yet the way our country is turning citizens against one another, making one the enemy of one's neighbour in the name of religions and gods - this is extremely wicked in my opinion. Much worse than what the Congress or the British or the Mughals did.

      Delete
  2. SuchitaMarch 17, 2021 at 2:58 PM

    Loved your theme on life. And as I recently learnt in a session with a writer, even a fictional setting is politics since it comes with a set of rules and baggage. Looking forward to your posts. All the best!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 17, 2021 at 8:47 PM

      Thank you.

      Can a writer actually do away with politics? You're so right: even fictional settings are political one way or another. I have to set my story somewhere, some time, and that place as well as time has its politics. How can any writer worth his salt escape that politics?

      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
47 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

Florentino’s Many Loves

Florentino Ariza has had 622 serious relationships (combo pack with sex) apart from numerous fleeting liaisons before he is able to embrace the only woman whom he loved with all his heart and soul. And that embrace happens “after a long and troubled love affair” that lasted 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days. Florentino is in his late 70s when he is able to behold, and hold as well, the very body of his beloved Fermina, who is just a few years younger than him. She now stands before him with her wrinkled shoulders, sagged breasts, and flabby skin that is as pale and cold as a frog’s. It is the culmination of a long, very long, wait as far as Florentino is concerned, the end of his passionate quest for his holy grail. “I’ve remained a virgin for you,” he says. All those 622 and more women whose details filled the 25 diaries that he kept writing with meticulous devotion have now vanished into thin air. They mean nothing now that he has reached where he longed to reach all his life. The...
62 comments
Read more

To an Old Friend

Image by Copilot Designer Dear S, I don’t know if you’d even remember me after all these decades, but I find myself writing to you as if it were only yesterday that we parted ways. You were one of the few friends I had at school. You may be amused to know that a drawing of yours that you gifted me stayed with me until I left Kerala after school. Half a century later, I still remember that beautiful pencil drawing, the picture of a vallam (Kerala’s canoe) resting on a shore beneath a coconut tree that slanted over a serene river on whose other bank was an undulating hilly landscape. A few birds flew happily in the sky. Though it was all done in pencil, absolutely black and white, my memories of it carry countless colours. I wonder where you are now. A few years later, when I returned to Kerala on holiday, I did visit your village to enquire about you. But the village had changed much and your hut on the hill wasn’t seen anymore. Maybe, you moved on. Maybe, you took up your father’s...
8 comments
Read more

Waste Land

This is a silly post though I dare to call it a poem.  Read it at your own risk. “In the room the women come and go Talking of Michelangelo.” T S Eliots’ Prufrock had at least the consolation of women coming and going talking of Michelangelo.   I’m back to regular routine tomorrow.  And women will come and go talking of duties, workshops and seminars.  They call themselves experts.  They will dictate the terms and conditions.  They have the backing of a religious sect. And I will sing along with T S Eliot : Weialala leia Wallala leialala The winter break is over.  The real break is going to begin. Religious break? Or feminine break? I’m looking forward to Madame Sosostris with her Tarot cards.  She will determine the future. The future of her staff.  She has started by terminating the services of the redundant.  Who is not redundant in this world? Is the expert essential? Is the Sw...
4 comments
Read more