Skip to main content

Prismatic Dispersions



Along with a few score of other bloggers, I’m accepting the A2Z Challenge of Blogchatter. This entails the writing of 26 blogposts in the month of April with each successive topic corresponding to a letter in the alphabet. This is the fourth time I’m accepting this challenge. I found it fun particularly in the last two years though quite exacting especially if you are hard up for time. But something productive emerges out of the exercise. What I wrote for this challenge in the last 2 years is available in book form in the public domain. Below are the links.

1. Great Books for Great Thoughts

2. Life: 24 Essays

This time my theme is Prismatic Dispersions.

A prism disperses light into its various components. We all learnt in junior school about the enchanting VIBGYOR. It was amazing to know as a little child that the ordinary white light that we took for granted consisted of so many sparkling colours. Later I thought of VIBGYOR as a metaphor for life itself. For life’s truths, more precisely.

Truth is never monochromatic. We are actually living now in what is called a post-truth world. Facts have ceased to matter anymore. Opinions matter. Perspectives matter. Whose opinion and whose perspective matters even more. Entire histories can be erased and whole new histories can be fabricated using the various state machineries and agencies. The media becomes the ruler’s lapdog. The judiciary becomes a mere scarecrow in the playfield of political hooligans who are ironically the legislators. Arthur Koestler’s Yogi and Commissar – opposite poles of the ascetic and the materialist – merge into a metamorphosed incarnation of Amrish Puri without facial expressions.

Prismatic Dispersions will present to you the multifarious colours of post-truth. No, it’s not going to be a political discourse. Not entirely, at least. It will be as apolitical as a metaphorical prism can be. It will start with A for Prayagraj and end with Zeitgeist. Prayagraj which killed one of the choicest celestial enemies of India’s history-lovers (or is it history-sheeters?) is our steppingstone to our ruling zeitgeist. In between there are even more interesting, possibly apolitical, things to look at like: Bhatti Mines as a symbol, Eclecticism, Loneliness can kill, Nationalism is a drug, Oceans are restless…


I assure the 500-odd readers who come to my blog every day that they will have much more in the month of April.

Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanMarch 17, 2022 at 7:13 PM

    Hari OM
    ...and each post will, of course, be written from your own position within the prism. Knowing that, bring it on! YAM xx
    (I only yesterday rememebred about A-Z and am frantically preparing to see if I can joing once more...)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalMarch 17, 2022 at 7:38 PM

      Thanks for reminding me of the heavy personal hand I drop into my posts. Can't help it, I guess. What's writing if it's not personal, subjective... Post-truth?

      Delete
  2. Zens2centsMarch 17, 2022 at 9:41 PM

    Awesome. Looking forward 👍

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anagha YatinMarch 17, 2022 at 10:53 PM

    Hope this prismatic dispersion has some bright shades too.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Prasanna RaghavanMarch 18, 2022 at 12:24 AM

    So, it's going to be colorful, looking forward.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Pooja MahimkarMarch 18, 2022 at 12:21 PM

    That's amazing! Looking for more!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Pandian RamaiahMarch 19, 2022 at 8:34 PM

    All the best sir. looking forward.

    ReplyDelete
  7. SuchitaMarch 24, 2022 at 12:18 PM

    "Post-truth" and versions of truth - sounds like A2Z will be an educative experience. Looking forward to your posts and all the best!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anupama JoshyMarch 30, 2022 at 1:16 PM

    Excited!

    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
44 comments
Read more

Remedios the Beauty and Innocence

  Remedios the Beauty is a character in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude . Like most members of her family, she too belongs to solitude. But unlike others, she is very innocent too. Physically she is the most beautiful woman ever seen in Macondo, the place where the story of her family unfolds. Is that beauty a reflection of her innocence? Well, Marquez doesn’t suggest that explicitly. But there is an implication to that effect. Innocence does make people look charming. What else is the charm of children? Remedios’s beauty is dangerous, however. She is warned by her great grandmother, who is losing her eyesight, not to appear before men. The girl’s beauty coupled with her innocence will have disastrous effects on men. But Remedios is unaware of “her irreparable fate as a disturbing woman.” She is too innocent to know such things though she is an adult physically. Every time she appears before outsiders she causes a panic of exasperation. To make...
4 comments
Read more

The Death of Truth and a lot more

Susmesh Chandroth in his kitchen “Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought,” Poet Shelley told us long ago. I was reading an interview with a prominent Malayalam writer, Susmesh Chandroth, this morning when Shelley returned to my memory. Chandroth says he left Kerala because the state had too much of affluence which is not conducive for the production of good art and literature. He chose to live in Kolkata where there is the agony of existence and hence also its ecstasies. He’s right about Kerala’s affluence. The state has eradicated poverty except in some small tribal pockets. Today almost every family in Kerala has at least one person working abroad and sending dollars home making the state’s economy far better than that of most of its counterparts. You will find palatial houses in Kerala with hardly anyone living in them. People who live in some distant foreign land get mansions constructed back home though they may never intend to come and live here. There are ...
10 comments
Read more

The Covenant of Water

Book Review Title: The Covenant of Water Author: Abraham Verghese Publisher: Grove Press UK, 2023 Pages: 724 “What defines a family isn’t blood but the secrets they share.” This massive book explores the intricacies of human relationships with a plot that spans almost a century. The story begins in 1900 with 12-year-old Mariamma being wedded to a 40-year-old widower in whose family runs a curse: death by drowning. The story ends in 1977 with another Mariamma, the granddaughter of Mariamma the First who becomes Big Ammachi [grandmother]. A lot of things happen in the 700+ pages of the novel which has everything that one may expect from a popular novel: suspense, mystery, love, passion, power, vulnerability, and also some social and religious issues. The only setback, if it can be called that at all, is that too many people die in this novel. But then, when death by drowning is a curse in the family, we have to be prepared for many a burial. The Kerala of the pre-Independ...
10 comments
Read more

Butterfly from Sambhal

“Weren’t you a worm till the other day?” The plant asks the butterfly. “That’s ancient history,” the butterfly answers. “Why don’t you look at the present reality which is much more beautiful?” “How can I forget that past?” The plant insists. “You ate almost all my leaves. Had not my constant gardener discovered your ravage in time and removed you from my frail limbs, I would have been dead long before you emerged from your contemplation with beautiful wings.” “I’m sorry, my dear Nandiarvattam ji. Did I have a choice? The only purpose of the existence of caterpillars is to eat leaves. Eat and eat. Until we get into the cocoon and wait for our wings to unfold. A new reality to unfold. It's a relentless hunger that creates butterflies.” “Your new reality is my painful old history. I still remember how I trembled foreseeing my death. Death by a worm!” “I wish I could heal you with my kisses.” “You’re doing that, thank you. But…” “I know. It hurts, the history thing. I’...
10 comments
Read more