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

Indian Knowledge Systems

Shashi Tharoor wrote a massive book back in 2018 to explore the paradoxes that constitute the man called Narendra Modi. Paradoxes dominate present Indian politics. One of them is what’s called the Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS). What constitute the paradox here are two parallel realities: one genuinely valuable, and the other deeply regressive. The contributions of Aryabhata and Brahmagupta to mathematics, Panini to linguistics, Vedanta to philosophy, and Ayurveda to medicine are genuine traditions that may deserve due attention. But there’s a hijacked version of IKS which is a hilariously, if not villainously, political project. Much of what is now packaged as IKS in government documents, school curricula, and propaganda includes mythological claims treated as historical facts, pseudoscience (e.g., Ravana’s Pushpaka Vimana as a real aircraft or Ganesha’s trunk as a product of plastic surgery), astrology replacing astronomy, ritualism replacing reasoning, attempts to invent the r...
17 comments
Read more

The Ugly Duckling

Source: Acting Company A. A. Milne’s one-act play, The Ugly Duckling , acquired a classical status because of the hearty humour used to present a profound theme. The King and the Queen are worried because their daughter Camilla is too ugly to get a suitor. In spite of all the devious strategies employed by the King and his Chancellor, the princess remained unmarried. Camilla was blessed with a unique beauty by her two godmothers but no one could see any beauty in her physical appearance. She has an exquisitely beautiful character. What use is character? The King asks. The play is an answer to that question. Character plays the most crucial role in our moral science books and traditional rhetoric, religious scriptures and homilies. When it comes to practical life, we look for other things such as wealth, social rank, physical looks, and so on. As the King says in this play, “If a girl is beautiful, it is easy to assume that she has, tucked away inside her, an equally beauti...
31 comments
Read more

Waiting for the Mahatma

Book Review I read this book purely by chance. R K Narayan is not a writer whom I would choose for any reason whatever. He is too simple, simplistic. I was at school on Saturday last and I suddenly found myself without anything to do though I was on duty. Some duties are like that: like a traffic policeman’s duty on a road without any traffic! So I went up to the school library and picked up a book which looked clean. It happened to be Waiting for the Mahatma by R K Narayan. A small book of 200 pages which I almost finished reading on the same day. The novel was originally published in 1955, written probably as a tribute to Mahatma Gandhi and India’s struggle for independence. The edition that I read is a later reprint by Penguin Classics. Twenty-year-old Sriram is the protagonist though Gandhi towers above everybody else in the novel just as he did in India of the independence-struggle years. Sriram who lives with his grandmother inherits significant wealth when he turns 20. Hi...
9 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