Skip to main content

Miracle


Miracle is a change of attitude. This is something that I tell my students frequently especially when we deal with the theme in two lessons. One of the lessons is a short story by Selma Lagerlof titled ‘The Rattrap.’ A beggarly rattrap peddler who resorts to stealing occasionally in order to make both ends meet is transformed by the kindness and generosity extended to him by a woman who is adding a deeper meaning to her Christmas celebration in the process. Her goodness, which is something new for the peddler, strikes a chord with him and changes his attitude to the world radically. From being a beggar and an occasional thief he raises himself to the standards of a regimental captain. Such a transformation of character is a miracle. A whole continuum of attitudes turns upside down. A rogue becomes a captain. Miracle.

A similar miracle happens in the second story that I teach in the same class, the story of a 14-year-old boy named Derry who hates himself and the entire world. The reason is that he has a scar on his face. One whole side of his face is burnt by acid in an accident. He finds himself repulsive whenever he dares to look at himself in a mirror. He thinks the world hates him because of that repulsiveness. Until he meets an old man named Lamb.

Lamb teaches him the possibility of miracles. Derry mocks Lamb saying that miracles happen only in fairy tales. If you expect some fairy to come and kiss you and make your scar vanish, no, that won’t happen, such miracles belong to fairy tales. There’s a miracle that you can work on yourself, Mr Lamb teaches Derry. Look at yourself from another perspective. You are not your scar. You have got everything that a normal boy has. Then what’s your problem? Your problem is your perspective, your attitudes. Let the scar be and you start doing what you should be doing: live your life to its fullest.

The miracle happens. It’s a slow process, of course. Mr Lamb has to modify Derry’s attitudes one by one. He does it. “I want the world,” Derry, who has been running away from the world, now says. And the world is his.

The world is yours if you want it. The world is not your enemy even if some of them there eat foods that you think repulsive, wear dresses that you find detestable, and clutch alien gods. The repulsion and disgust and all those other nauseating responses come from within you. From your attitudes. Change them and you find the world changing. That’s the miracle.

PS. This is an adaptation of one of my today’s classes. The #WriteAPageADay challenge from Blogchatter made me resort to this.

 

Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanFebruary 14, 2022 at 8:38 PM

    Hari OM
    Spot on!!! YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anupama JoshyFebruary 15, 2022 at 1:39 AM

    I remember writing down - "Miracle is a change of attitude." in your class as one of the important points of the chapter 'On The Face Of It'. And, "I want the world" is going on my wall of quotes;)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 15, 2022 at 5:22 AM

      I remember the eagerness in your eyes as you listened in those classes. Students like you sustained me as a teacher.

      Delete
  3. SonaFebruary 15, 2022 at 10:16 AM

    I think I am going to look up both these stories :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 15, 2022 at 12:27 PM

      One place where you can find them is NCERT English textbook of class 12.

      Delete

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
44 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

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so
39 comments
Read more

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
36 comments
Read more

Octlantis

I was reading an essay on octopuses when friend John walked in. When he is bored of his usual activities – babysitting and gardening – he would come over. Politics was the favourite concern of our conversations. We discussed politics so earnestly that any observer might think that we were running the world through the politicians quite like the gods running it through their devotees. “Octopuses are quite queer creatures,” I said. The essay I was reading had got all my attention. Moreover, I was getting bored of politics which is irredeemable anyway. “They have too many brains and a lot of hearts.” “That’s queer indeed,” John agreed. “Each arm has a mind of its own. Two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons are found in their arms. The arms can taste, touch, feel and act on their own without any input from the brain.” “They are quite like our politicians,” John observed. Everything is linked to politics in John’s mind. I was impressed with his analogy, however. “Perhaps, you’re r
34 comments
Read more