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

Don Bosco

Don Bosco (16 Aug 1815 - 31 Jan 1888) In Catholic parlance, which flows through my veins in spite of myself, today is the Feast of Don Bosco. My life was both made and unmade by Don Bosco institutions. Any great person can make or break people because of his followers. Religious institutions are the best examples. I’m presenting below an extract from my forthcoming book titled Autumn Shadows to celebrate the Feast of Don Bosco in my own way which is obviously very different from how it is celebrated in his institutions today. Do I feel nostalgic about the Feast? Not at all. I feel relieved. That’s why this celebration. The extract follows. Don Bosco, as Saint John Bosco was popularly known, had a remarkably good system for the education of youth.   He called it ‘preventive system’.   The educators should be ever vigilant so that wrong actions are prevented before they can be committed.   Reason, religion and loving kindness are the three pillars of that syste...
2 comments
Read more

Relatives and Antidepressants

One of the scenes that remain indelibly etched in my memory is from a novel of Malayalam writer O V Vijayan. Father and little son are on a walk. Father tells son, “Walk carefully, son, otherwise you may fall down.” Son: “What will happen if I fall?” Father: "Relatives will laugh.” I seldom feel comfortable with my relatives. In fact, I don’t feel comfortable in any society, but relatives make it more uneasy. The reason, as I’ve understood, is that your relatives are the last people to see any goodness in you. On the other hand, they are the first ones to discover all your faults. Whenever certain relatives visit, my knees buckle and the blood pressure shoots up. I behave quite awkwardly. They often describe my behaviour as arising from my ego, which used to be a oversized in yesteryear. I had a few such visitors the other day. The problem was particularly compounded by their informing me that they would be arriving by about 3.30 pm and actually reaching at about 7.30 pm. ...
16 comments
Read more

Coffee can be bitter

The dawns of my childhood were redolent of filtered black coffee. We were woken up before the birds started singing in the lush green village landscape outside home. The sun would split the darkness of the eastern sky with its splinter of white radiance much after we children had our filtered coffee with a small lump of jaggery. Take a bite of the jaggery and then a sip of the coffee. Coffee was a ritual in our home back then. Perhaps our parents believed it would jolt our neurons awake and help us absorb our lessons before we set out on the 4-kilometre walk to school after all the morning rituals at home. After high school, when I left home for further studies at a distant place, the ritual of the morning coffee stopped. It resumed a whole decade later when I completed my graduation and took up a teaching job in Shillong. But I had lost my taste for filtered coffee by then; tea took its place. Plain tea without milk – what is known as red tea in most parts of India. Coffee ret...
18 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more