Skip to main content

One Way Ticket to the Moon


Given a choice, will I go to Moon or Mars? Moon, of course. Haven’t I always been there? Been a loony, I mean. There was always something wrong with me right from childhood. At the age of 25 I landed on the client’s chair in a psychiatrist’s office. Nothing much came of it. Remember Holden Caulfield of The Catcher in the Rye? After a whole year’s psychoanalysis, he remained the same: as loony as he ever was. Some of my benefactors in Shillong put me through a five-year psychoanalysis with almost everyone in the place experimenting on my madness as if I were a drum placed in the marketplace for anyone to beat a rhythm while passing by. Nothing happened again. I remained as loony as ever, if not worse.

Now as an old man, a senior citizen by my government’s reckoning [which simply means I pay more for insurances], I feel loonier than ever. If earlier I felt out of place in my nearby surroundings, now I feel like a total misfit in my entire country. I can’t understand what my fellow country people are doing nowadays. I think they are insane. But that’s not possible; the majority can never be insane. The majority make the rules. Loonies like me scoff at those rules. I mean, I can’t go around lynching people. I’m a loony, you see.

I belong to the moon whose one side is always dark.

Actually NO. I mean one side of the moon is not really dark. The sunlight falls equally on all sides of the moon. But the sane people on the earth can see only one side. They think that the other side is dark just because they never see it.

I belong to the dark side of the moon.

Send me there by all means. Let me fly away from all my yesterdays.

PS. This post is part of Blogchatter Blog Hop.

 

Comments

  1. To the moon!!, ahh I wanna come too

    And yes, none can see the other side, that doesn't prove it's dark on the other, your feelings are totally understandable
    Truth be told, I am a loony too, feeling misfit, looked as something different or weird.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hahaha. Taking you along will be fun with you trying to teach me and I trying to teach you lessons that neither of us won't want. 😊

      Delete
  2. Hari OM
    Interesting - I would opt for Mars. The further away I can get from this lunatic planet the better... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I once dreamt about going gallivanting in the infinite and reaching the edge of the cosmos. But i had to return. This is the only planet for us!

      Delete
  3. Let me fly away from all of my yesterdays...a beautiful way to end a post that meant as much between the lines as it did by itself.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. More often than not, I'm left wondering who is really sane in this world. If majority were left to decide affairs, there'd be only fish in my kitchen as there are more cats in my house than humans.

      Delete
  4. The Anonymous message was my me, Mayuri at Sirimiri

    ReplyDelete
  5. Loved 'I belong to the dark side of the moon.'

    ReplyDelete
  6. Enjoyed. We are all loonies in our own ways, aren't we?

    ReplyDelete
  7. It would be interesting to see the what the earth looks like from the moon and also what views the dark side has to offer. :)
    I'd like to go to see the red rocks on Mars too. :D

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Maybe science will give you a chance to make the visit, you know. The way the technology is leaping...

      Delete
  8. That concluding para was so evocative and thoughtful!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Well, a different take on teh prompt and you association with the moon.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Being Christian in BJP’s India

A moment of triumph for India’s women’s cricket team turned unexpectedly into a controversy about religious faith and expression, thanks to some right-wing footsloggers. After her stellar performance in the semi-final of the Wormen’s World Cup (2025), Jemimah Rodrigues thanked Jesus for her achievement. “Jesus fought for me,” she said quoting the Bible: “Stand still and God will fight for you” [1 Samuel 12:16]. Some BJP leaders and their mindless followers took strong exception to that and roiled the religious fervour of the bourgeoning right wing with acerbic remarks. If Ms Rodrigues were a Hindu, she would have thanked her deity: Ram or Hanuman or whoever. Since she is a Christian, she thanked Jesus. What’s wrong in that? If she was a nonbeliever like me, God wouldn’t have topped the list of her benefactors. Religion is a talisman for a lot of people. There’s nothing wrong in imagining that some god sitting in some heaven is taking care of you. In fact, it gives a lot of psychologic...

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

Hollow Leaders

A century ago, T S Eliot wrote about the hollowness of his countrymen in a poem titled The Hollow Men . The World War I had led to a lot of disillusionment with the collapse of powerful empires and the savagery of the war itself which unleashed barbaric slaughter. The generation that survived was known as the “Lost Generation.” Before the war, Western civilisation was sustained by certain values and principles given by religion, the Enlightenment, and Victorian morality. The war showed that science and technology, which could improve life, had actually produced machine guns, gas warfare, and mass death. Religion became hollow. People became hollow. “We are the hollow men,” Eliot’s poem began. The civilisation looked sophisticated from outside, but it was empty inside. There is a lot of religion today in the world. My country has allegedly become so religious that it decides what you will eat, wear, which god you will pray to, and even the language for communication. The ultimat...

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...

Why India Needs to Reclaim its Liberal Soul

Russia’s Putin announced the demise of liberalism, America’s Trump wrote its obituary, and India’s Modi wielded the death as a political forge that transmuted him into a demigod. We are, unfortunately, passing through an era of so-called “strong leaders” like Putin, Trump, and Modi. A 2024 report based on a 2023 Pew survey found that 67% Indians endorsed a governing system with a “strong leader” who can make decisions without interference from courts or parliament. This support for autocracy was the highest among all surveyed nations and has increased consistently after Modi became the PM. Shockingly, the same 2023 survey found that 72% of Indian respondents expressed a favourable view of military rule. Indians don’t want individual freedom, it seems. We are used to the many gods who incarnated at appropriate times and destroyed evil ( Sambhavami yuge yuge ). Modi is our present divine incarnation. It is the duty of these avatars to conquer evil; hence individual freedom doesn’t ...