Skip to main content

Simple goodness



I was 16 or 17 when I watched the movie Fiddler on the Roof first time. The character of the protagonist Tevye made a deep impression on me then. Later I watched that movie many times. I bought a CD when I was in charge of the Media Room of Sawan Public School in Delhi and showed the movie to my students. Even now I watch it occasionally. Tevye has been one of my most admired characters.

It is Tevye’s simple goodness that I find adorable. Right at the beginning of the movie, Tevye tells us that tradition is of vital importance to him and his people, the Jews living in a Ukrainian village in the early 1900s. The situation of the Jews is as precarious as that of a fiddler on the roof who will break his neck if he does not keep his balance adroitly. It is tradition that helps them to maintain that balance. They have tradition for everything: how to wear clothes, what and how to eat, how to pray, the duties of each person at home as well as in society, and so on. How did all these traditions start? “I’ll tell you,” Tevye says. After a moment’s pause, he says, “I don’t know…. But because of our traditions, everyone of us knows who he is and what God expects of him.”

Tevye is a devout Jew. He has deep faith in his God. He follows the instructions of the Rabbi. He is loyal to his community’s traditions. But each time he is confronted with a dilemma that pits him between love and tradition, he chooses love. Except when his third daughter chooses to marry a Christian. Compromises have their limits too.

There is no compromise when it comes to his God. He often wonders why God has made him thus and thus. Why am I poor? He asks God. What harm would have happened if he had a little wealth? He also tells God humorously that He (Yahweh) should choose some other race once in a while for His particular love. Nevertheless, Tevye shares a heart-touching rapport with his God. It is that rapport that makes him a simple, good human being.

Tevye reminds me of the human potential for simple goodness. He is all that I am not but I find immensely charming. He humanises religion and traditions as very few people can. If your religion and its traditions don’t make you a better human being, what use are they? 



Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanFebruary 6, 2022 at 3:19 PM

    Hari OM
    You have named all the reasons I too have this musical and character as a personal favourite! YAM xx (who notes a return to the previous blog template - I prefer this one I think.)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 6, 2022 at 3:37 PM

      Some works live on in our memory... Like this one.

      I keep tinkering with the templates when something or the other doesn't function smoothly. I too prefer this to the previous one.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...
39 comments
Read more

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...
30 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...
16 comments
Read more

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...
47 comments
Read more

Dharma and Destiny

  Illustration by Copilot Designer Unwavering adherence to dharma causes much suffering in the Ramayana . Dharma can mean duty, righteousness, and moral order. There are many characters in the Ramayana who stick to their dharma as best as they can and cause much pain to themselves as well as others. Dasharatha sees it as his duty as a ruler (raja-dharma) to uphold truth and justice and hence has to fulfil the promise he made to Kaikeyi and send Rama into exile in spite of the anguish it causes him and many others. Rama accepts the order following his dharma as an obedient son. Sita follows her dharma as a wife and enters the forest along with her husband. The brotherly dharma of Lakshmana makes him leave his own wife and escort Rama and Sita. It’s all not that simple, however. Which dharma makes Rama suspect Sita’s purity, later in Lanka? Which dharma makes him succumb to a societal expectation instead of upholding his personal integrity, still later in Ayodhya? “You were car...
24 comments
Read more