Skip to main content

Seeing with the heart

 


“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly,” Antoine de Saint-Exupery says in his classical little book, The Little Prince. “What is essential is invisible to the eye.” The most vital truths are not arrived at through reason. Even philosophers need to listen to their heart, as writer Eric Weiner says in The Socrates Express. The answers of the head are not only less satisfying, says Weiner, “but, in the deepest sense, less true.” It is not clever answers that the world needs. It is authentic answers which are required.

Authentic answers come from the heart. The great teachers were all people who sat with their ignorance and doubts for a long, very long while, before they arrived at answers that eventually made the world wiser.

When answers of the heart are lynched, we will have a perverse nation. Too many poets and writers of India are perishing behind the bars because they looked at the reality with their hearts. In a penetrating article titled ‘There is freedom, but no mercy’ in the New Indian Express today, the writer cites the examples of people like Varavara Rao. Rao, like many others imprisoned for being good human beings in Modi’s India, is suffering from serious medical problems as he languishes in the notorious Taloja Jail. What is his crime? He wrote poetry. He looked at India with his heart. And wrote lines like: “The foe fears the poet /Incarcerates him / But already the poet in his notes / Breathes among the masses.”

The poet finds a place in the hearts of the masses precisely because his truths come from his heart. But in a political system that has been perverted by the spread of falsehood and hatred, where the heart has been filled with venom, can we write from the heart? Can writers afford to be authentic?

It is very ironical that a ruthlessly oppressive politician like Amit Shah writes in a national daily blaming Nehru for the suppression of freedoms in India. As the writer of the above-mentioned Indian Express article concludes, when leaders (like Amit Shah) play games with the people, the leaders win and the people lose. The people are at the mercy of the state that is incapable of seeing with the heart. Such a nation will  glide into either dictatorship or degeneration. Either way, the future isn’t very promising. Unless the heart returns to the place it deserves.

This post is a part of Blogchatter Half Marathon.

 

Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanJune 27, 2021 at 4:19 PM

    Hari OM
    Another excellent post! The manipulation of the mass media forms and the suppression of the independant ones (and individual voices) is all part of a picture of rule that harks back to very dark days indeed... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJune 27, 2021 at 10:17 PM

      We are living a large falsehood in India now. One big lie.

      Delete
  2. जितेन्द्र माथुरJune 27, 2021 at 4:42 PM

    It is not clever answers that the world needs. It is authentic answers which are required. You said it. Amit Shah has recently penned an article for The Times of India too. Our reputed newspapers and journalists are rubbing their noses in front of the high and the mighty now-a-days, thus losing all their dignity (earned over a life time).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJune 27, 2021 at 10:20 PM

      I've given the link to Amit Shah's article in the post without mentioning Times of India, a newspaper that is totally sold out. I stopped reading that paper. But I saw Amit Shah's article because somebody drew my attention to it. The way our newspapers and magazines have sold their souls to the mendacious government is pathetic.

      Delete
  3. Chinmayee Gayatree SahuJune 28, 2021 at 8:52 PM

    Certainly, repression of heartfelt thoughts and their expression has become the norm in the current times. We are also to be blamed to have chosen the ones mentioned above who think, they can rule for eternity! As rightly pointed out by you may the heart return to its right place!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJune 28, 2021 at 10:12 PM

      We are to be blamed for electing such leaders, no doubt. On the other hand, the leaders will learn certain lessons the hard way if they don't mend themselves.

      Delete
  4. Sandhya BhattaramJune 29, 2021 at 12:21 AM

    Enjoyed reading this post. A politician with a vision of a leader is what we need.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJune 29, 2021 at 9:07 AM

      Visionless politicians are the curse of India now.

      Delete
  5. Chetan MaheshwariJuly 3, 2021 at 11:19 AM

    Leaders always win, and people will continue to lose...No matter whoever gets elected, people will continue to lose. Systems need revolutionary changes which optimistically will take a decade or more

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let
26 comments
Read more

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
37 comments
Read more

William and the autumn of life

William and I were together only for one year, but our friendship has grown stronger year after year. The duration of that friendship is going to hit half a century. In the meanwhile both he and I changed many places. William was in Kerala when I was in Shillong. He was in Ireland when I was in Delhi. Now I am in Kerala where William is planning to migrate back. We were both novices of a religious congregation for one year at Kotagiri in Tamil Nadu. He was older than me by a few years and far more mature too. But we shared a cordial rapport which kept us in touch though we went in unexpected directions later. William’s conversations had the same pattern back then and now too. I’d call it Socratic. He questions a lot of things that you say with the intention of getting to the depth of the matter. The last conversation I had with him was when I decided to stop teaching. I mention this as an example of my conversations with William. “You are a good teacher. Why do you want to stop
15 comments
Read more

Uriel the gargoyle-maker

Uriel was a multifaceted personality. He could stab with words, sting like Mike Tyson, and distort reality charmingly with the precision of a gifted cartoonist. He was sedate now and passionate the next moment. He could don the mantle of a carpenter, a plumber, or a mechanic, as situation demanded. He ran a school in Shillong in those days when I was there. That’s how I landed in the magic circle of his friendship. He made me a gargoyle. Gradually. When the refined side of human civilisation shaped magnificent castles and cathedrals, the darker side of the same homo sapiens gave birth to gargoyles. These grotesque shapes were erected on those beautiful works of architecture as if to prove that there is no human genius without a dash of perversion. In many parts of India, some such repulsive shape is placed in a prominent place of great edifices with the intention of warding off evil or, more commonly, the evil eye. I was Uriel’s gargoyle for warding off the evil eye from his sc
12 comments
Read more

X the variable

X is the most versatile and hence a very precious entity in mathematics. Whenever there is an unknown quantity whose value has to be discovered, the mathematician begins with: Let the unknown quantity be x . This A2Z series presented a few personalities who played certain prominent roles in my life. They are not the only ones who touched my life, however. There are so many others, especially relatives, who left indelible marks on my psyche in many ways. I chose not to bring relatives into this series. Dealing with relatives is one of the most difficult jobs for me. I have failed in that task time and again. Miserably sometimes. When I think of relatives, O V Vijayan’s parable leaps to my mind. Father and little son are on a walk. “Be careful lest you fall,” father warns the boy. “What will happen if I fall?” The boy asks. The father’s answer is: “Relatives will laugh.” One of the harsh truths I have noticed as a teacher is that it is nearly impossible to teach your relatives – nephews
14 comments
Read more