Skip to main content

Sensitivity

 


What, according to you, is the virtue that the world stands most in need of today? #NeededVirtue [Indispire Edition 403]

A little more sensitivity will make the world a far better place.

 

Can the wind kiss the leaves without shaking them so much as to make them fall? Green leaves quivering in the breeze that caresses them fondly fills my heart with romance.

Often they are like lovers in an embrace.

Sometimes like the infant in its mother’s arms.

 

The cool touch of the misty air on my face as I ride my scooter early in the morning. Sensitivity.

Palpable was the moisture of the moonlight that was asleep on the village road until it got up and walked away as the dawn broke. Sensitivity is ephemeral. Like the rainbow somewhere far, far away.

 

The sun begins to lash soon.

At the market junction, the loudspeaker blares charming slogans whose hollowness penetrates into the marrow of my bones.

Is it impossible for politics to be sensitive?

Is it impossible for the religious teachers to be sensitive?

Can the politician be a gentle breeze in Shaheen Bagh?

Can flowers replace the barbed wires in Singhu?

Can the gods in the temples on my way smile?

 

The sun is burning my skin.

I take U-Turn and go back home.

I’ll protect the smiles still left there.

From my leaders.

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanJanuary 17, 2022 at 11:07 PM

    Hari OM
    ooohhh.... this lyrical piece reached out and wrapped itself around my little grey cells! YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 18, 2022 at 5:24 AM

      And I'm glad it did. Your presence in this space has begun to mean something special for me.

      Delete
  2. parwatisingariJanuary 18, 2022 at 1:25 PM

    hmm... interesting.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sandhya BhattaramJanuary 18, 2022 at 6:16 PM

    Beautifully expressed!

    ReplyDelete
  4. ArtiJanuary 19, 2022 at 11:23 AM

    Dear Tomichan,
    I've been away for a long time and coming back to your blog to read 'sensitivity' seems pre-destined. Like Yamini, your words, contrasting the hardness of politics with the softness of human sensitivity, engulf me.
    Warmly,
    Arti

    ReplyDelete
  5. JaiJanuary 23, 2022 at 7:48 AM

    This piece is tinged with poetic melody. I loved the way you have called the green leaves and the breeze lovers. The green leaves shaking in the gentle breeze. Wonderful words. Before that you have asked the question whether the wind can shake the leaves without making them fall on the ground. Gentleness and sensitivity are indeed two things that are the need of the hour. Very well written, Tom.

    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...
18 comments
Read more

War and Meaning of Victory

In the summer of 1999, while the rest of India was soaked in monsoon and Cricket World Cup, the country’s soldiers were clawing up frozen cliffs daring the bullets that came shooting from above. India’s incorrigible neighbour had sent its soldiers and militants to capture the snow-covered peaks of Kargil. It was an act of deception, a capture of India’s land stealthily. The terrain was harsh and hostile, testing the limits of human courage with every jagged step. The Kargil War was not just against a human enemy, but against peaks of stones and snow where the air itself was an adversary. Three months of bitter conflict and subhuman killing ended in India’s victory over the invading Pakistan. Victory! July 26 is celebrated ever after as Kargil Vijay Diwas by India. What is victory, however? Philosophically, I mean. We are supposed to be rational (philosophical) creatures, after all. “ W ar does not determine who is right,” Bertrand Russell said famously, “but who is left.” Every...
8 comments
Read more

Dine in Eden

If you want to have a typical nonvegetarian Malayali lunch or dinner in a serene village in Kerala, here is the Garden of Eden all set for you at Ramapuram [literally ‘Abode of Rama’] in central Kerala. The place has a temple each for Rama and his three brothers: Lakshmana, Bharata, and Shatrughna. It is believed that Rama meditated in this place during his exile and also that his brothers joined him for a while. Right in the heart of the small town is a Catholic church which is an imposing structure that makes an eloquent assertion of religious identity. Quite close to all these religious places is the Garden of Eden, Eden Thoppu in Malayalam, a toddy shop with a difference. Toddy is palm wine, a mild alcoholic drink collected from palm trees. In my childhood, toddy was really natural; i.e., collected from palm trees including coconut trees which are ubiquitous in Kerala. My next-door neighbours, two brothers who lived in the same house, were toddy-tappers. Toddy was a health...
10 comments
Read more

Diwali, Gifts, and Promises

Diwali gifts for me! This is the first time in my 52 years of existence that I received so many gifts in the name of Diwali.  In Kerala, where I was born and brought up, Diwali was not celebrated at all in those days, the days of my childhood.  Even now the festival is not celebrated in the villages of Kerala as I found out from my friends there.  It is celebrated in the cities (and some villages) where people from North Indian states live.  When I settled down in Delhi in 2001 Diwali was a shock to me.  I was sitting in the balcony of a relative of mine who resided in Sadiq Nagar.  I was amazed to see the fireworks that lit up the city sky and polluted the entire atmosphere in the city.  There was a medical store nearby from which I could buy Otrivin nasal drops to open up those little holes in my nose (which have been examined by many physicians and given up as, perhaps, a hopeless case) which were blocked because of the Diwali smoke....
55 comments
Read more