Skip to main content

Being Alive

 

A scene from Ezhattumukham in Kerala

One of the most alive characters I can mention without having to think twice is Zorba, a creation of Nikos Kazantzakis. Even in his sixties, he possessed all the passion of a young man. He sang and danced, made love, drank wine, and did not care much for the silly politics of ordinary mortals and the gods of the same mortals. What would Zorba answer if you ask him, “What does being alive mean to you?”

“To have the stars above, the land to your left and the sea to your right…” Zorba would begin. Life is freedom. Free to sing your own song and dance your own steps. It doesn’t matter whether the song jars or the dance looks clumsy. Just liberate yourself from all man-made snares like isms and religions. And live. Live your life.

To have no ambition and yet work like a horse as if you had the all the ambition of a conqueror. To live far from men, not to need them and yet to love them. To be able to stand with the land behind you and the sea in front, feeling the wind in your face, and to enjoy the urge to fling all that you have achieved so far to the wind… and move slowly to the realms of fairy tales.

I have admired Zorba from the time I came to know him. I was in my twenties when I read Zorba the Greek the first time. I read the novel many times later. Now I am as old as Zorba is in the novel. I have committed a lot of blunders which Zorba might think of as natural. At any rate, I have learnt certain valuable lessons from most of those blunders. That’s what being alive is: learning lessons from your blunders. Zorba would agree with me though I never possessed his wisdom or even the potential for such wisdom.

PS. A certain dullness of spirit is overwhelming me these days. But fellow blogger Parwati Singari’s prompt - What according to you is being alive? #beingalive – became a gentle breeze wafting from the sea…

PPS. This blog is participating in The Blogchatter’s #MyFriendAlexa campaign. 

Comments

  1. Harshita NandaOctober 6, 2021 at 3:59 PM

    While running behind the goals and ambitions we forget to live no?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 6, 2021 at 4:43 PM

      Precisely. Obsession with conquests is the most serious threat to being alive!

      Delete
  2. Neerja BhatnagarOctober 6, 2021 at 5:10 PM

    Very true. Such a liberating post. We just forget about living while running after what we think is life.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 6, 2021 at 5:20 PM

      If people let go a few pursuits life would be great for them as well as some others.

      Delete
  3. Weekend GetawaysOctober 6, 2021 at 5:25 PM

    Its very difficult, but that would be ultimate nirvana

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 6, 2021 at 7:27 PM

      Perhaps not too difficult. But I can say with certainty that it took me long years to at least realise that I was blundering pretty much.

      Delete
  4. Yamini MacLeanOctober 6, 2021 at 5:32 PM

    Hari OM
    Ah Zorba - a favourite of my younger years too and you remind that it me that it may be time to reacquaint... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 6, 2021 at 7:26 PM

      I'm sure he will lead you to yet another new light.

      Delete
  5. Debidutta MohantyOctober 6, 2021 at 8:42 PM

    It's a refreshing and liberating post. Most of the time we chase mundane and trivial things but we think that's life.

    ReplyDelete
  6. jyoti @momcaptureslifeOctober 6, 2021 at 11:58 PM

    Absolutely we need to learn lessons from our blunders

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anuradha sowmyanarayananOctober 7, 2021 at 10:14 AM

    thought provoking

    ReplyDelete
  8. The SiriusgramOctober 7, 2021 at 9:39 PM

    Seriously, thought provoking . Great read

    ReplyDelete
  9. deepti menonOctober 7, 2021 at 11:16 PM

    Being alive and young at heart can be highly liberating. Thank you for reminding us of Zorba the Greek!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Debdatta Dasgupta October 8, 2021 at 9:40 AM

    I now have Dean Jones singing Being Alive in my mind!!!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Gurjeet chhabraOctober 8, 2021 at 11:17 AM

    So beautiful, true it seems like we don't live. we run on a rat race.

    ReplyDelete
  12. sivaranjiniOctober 8, 2021 at 12:38 PM

    A beautiful take on being alive and allowing ourselves to grow through life with all the flaws it had given us.

    ReplyDelete
  13. RituOctober 8, 2021 at 10:15 PM

    Being on this constant hamster wheel, most forget what it is to live. To be alive. A thought provoking post.

    ReplyDelete
  14. GBOctober 9, 2021 at 2:57 PM

    Finding the meaning if being alive is one of the biggest paradox of life.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Manali DesaiOctober 10, 2021 at 6:46 AM

    'That’s what being alive is: learning lessons from your blunders.'
    This motivated me a lot.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Abha SinghOctober 10, 2021 at 4:39 PM

    Learning from our mistakes yet enjoying life that’s what being alive means. No one is living perfect life. It is going to full with happy and sad moments and that’s what gives us strength.

    ReplyDelete
  17. SrikanthOctober 10, 2021 at 5:30 PM

    A very thought provoking post

    ReplyDelete
  18. UnknownOctober 12, 2021 at 6:06 AM

    What a thought-provoking, refreshing post. True that, in chasing the aimless rat race somewhere we have forgotten to live the life in real sense.

    Archana Srivastava
    archusblog

    ReplyDelete
  19. sadvika annamOctober 12, 2021 at 11:15 PM

    A post to think off! Learnign from mistakes is the best we could do

    ReplyDelete
  20. jayshree bhagatOctober 14, 2021 at 2:25 AM

    I am learning with my age and mistakes

    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 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

Are You Sane?

Illustration by Gemini AI A few months back, a clinical psychiatrist asked me whether anyone in my family ever suffered from insanity. “All of us are insane to some degree,” I wanted to tell her. But I didn’t because there was another family member with me. We had taken a youngster of the family for counselling. I had forgotten the above episode until something happened the other day which led me to write last post . The incident that prompted me to write that post brought down an elder of my family from the pedestal on which I had placed him simply because he is a very devout religious person who prays a lot and moves about in the society like the gentlest soul that ever lived in these not-so-gentle terrains. I also think that the severe flu which descended on me that night was partly a product of my disillusionment. The realisation that one’s religion and devotion that guided one for seven decades hadn’t touched one’s heart even a little bit was a rude shock to me. What does re...
10 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