Skip to main content

When Trust is Broken


You meet an old man with an unearthly sparkle in his eyes on a street in one of Coleridge's poems. He insists on telling you his story.

He was a sailor. A tempest carried his ship away, beyond all human control, to the South Pole. And there the ship lay stuck in the ice with huge icebergs towering all around. No sign of life anywhere. It looked like a hopeless situation.

Then came from somewhere an albatross breathing hope and cheer. The bird became the sailors' friend. It came whenever they called it "for food or play." A unique bond developed between the men and the bird.

That bond was shot to death by a sailor one day. He took his "cross-bow" and sent an arrow straight into the heart of the trust that had developed between the men and the bird. Wanton brutality. So human!

The sailor who committed the perverse act never knew peace after that. Their ship was damned. The sailors perished one by one. Our sailor survived to tell the story of his betrayal to us, to teach us the lesson about the value of trust.

When you break the trust of another being, you are wrecking the bond that unites beings together. It is the gossamer web of relationships that you rend. What is life without relationships?

When you break the trust of a person, you are shooting an arrow through his very soul. You force him to erect protective armours all around. He won't be able to let the river of his love flow.

Have you seen people whose hands tremble as they sign their names? Study them and you'll know the meaning of armoured heart. 

Trust is the bird that comes through the mists of human struggles when your ship is stuck. If you shoot it...

The consequence depends on what kind of a person you are.

Not many possess the sagacity of Coleridge's sailor.

My hands trembled for years as I signed my name because a person had broken my very soul by shooting an arrow through it. The most terrible pain was when the very person who gifted me that shiver asked, "Why can't you put the same signature twice?"

When your soul is fragmented, no two of your signatures will be the same. I didn't tell him that, however. He was sitting on the other side of the table. It was to get there that he had broken my trust.

PS. Written for Indispire Edition 447: What pains most is...

Top post on Blogchatter

Comments

  1. magiceyeJuly 25, 2023 at 6:17 PM

    Politicians have honed into a fine art.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yamini MacLeanJuly 25, 2023 at 10:43 PM

    Hari OM
    The pain of trust broken cuts deeper, I think, than just about any other... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
  3. TomJuly 26, 2023 at 5:15 AM

    ...I remember when our son who is now 51 lied to me, he had to regain my trust.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 26, 2023 at 6:18 AM

      And that, regaining of trust, is a tough job. But between parents and children, it's a different matter. It also depends on the gravity of the act.

      Delete
  4. AnonymousJuly 26, 2023 at 5:36 PM

    What hurts the most is when you give someone a second chance even after they have hurt you very much, only to get betrayed again.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousJuly 26, 2023 at 6:13 PM

    An enemy is better than a friend who laughs with us and stabs us from behind. But some people forgive them only to be cheated again.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 26, 2023 at 6:56 PM

      Once bitten, we should be twice shy. I was betrayed twice, but not by the same person.

      Delete
  6. Pradeep NairJuly 27, 2023 at 9:16 PM

    Yes, relationships and, by extension, society are built on trust

    ReplyDelete
  7. CareenaAugust 3, 2023 at 12:49 PM

    Being betrayed at least once in life is now more a rite of passage. I'll take that wisdom no matter how painful...

    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

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 4

The footpath between Park Avenue and Subhash Bose Park The Park Avenue in Ernakulam is flanked by gigantic rain trees with their branches arching over the road like a cathedral of green. They were not so domineering four decades ago when I used to walk beneath their growing canopies. The Park Avenue with its charming, enormous trees has a history too. King Rama Varma of Kochi ordered trees to be planted on either side of the road and make it look like a European avenue. He also developed a park beside it. The park was named after him, though today it is divided into two parts, with one part named after Subhash Chandra Bose and the other after Indira Gandhi. We can never say how long Indira Gandhi’s name will remain there. Even Sardar Patel, whom the right wing apparently admires, was ousted from the world’s biggest cricket stadium which was renamed Narendra Modi Stadium by Narendra Modi.   Renaming places and roads and institutions is one of the favourite pastimes of the pres...
11 comments
Read more

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 3

Street leading to St Francis Church, Fort Kochi There were Christians in Kerala long before the Brahmins, who came to be known as Namboothiris, landed in the state from North India some time after 6 th century CE. Tradition has it that Thomas, disciple of Jesus, brought Christianity to Kerala in the first century. That is quite possible, given the trade relationships that Kerala had with the Roman Empire in those days. Pliny the Elder, Roman author, chastised in his encyclopaedic work, Natural History (published around 77 CE), the Romans’ greed for pepper from India. He was displeased with his country spending “no less than fifty million sesterces” on a commodity which had no value other than its “certain pungency.” Did Thomas sail on one of the many ships that came to Kerala to purchase “pungency”? Possible.   Even if Thomas did not come, the advent of Christianity in Kerala precedes the arrival of the Namboothiris. The Persians established trade links with Kerala in 4 ...
10 comments
Read more

Five Microtales

1.        Development             Chamar, Lohar, Mehtar and many others stood at a distance, along with their families, and watched their huts being pulled down by a bulldozer. They were asked to leave the place where they had been living for decades. “The government has taken over this land for development works,” an officer said. Chamar, Lohar, Mehtar and the others spread their bedsheets under a flyover over which flew opulent vehicles of development.   2.        Impersonation             The old woman went to the Women’s Welfare office. She wanted to register herself for the Prime Minister’s monthly welfare scheme for the old and unemployable women. She placed her thumb on the scanner for Aadhar authentication. “Not matching,” the officer said. She was arrested for trying to impersonate. Sitti...
8 comments
Read more

Re-exploring the Past: The Fort Kochi Chapters – 1

Inside St Francis Church, Fort Kochi Moraes Zogoiby (Moor), the narrator-protagonist of Salman Rushdie’s iconic novel The Moor’s Last Sigh , carries in his genes a richly variegated lineage. His mother, Aurora da Gama, belongs to the da Gama family of Kochi, who claim descent from none less than Vasco da Gama, the historical Portuguese Catholic explorer. Abraham Zogoiby, his father, is a Jew whose family originally belonged to Spain from where they were expelled by the Catholic Inquisition. Kochi welcomed all the Jews who arrived there in 1492 from Spain. Vasco da Gama landed on the Malabar coast of Kerala in 1498. Today’s Fort Kochi carries the history of all those arrivals and subsequent mingling of history and miscegenation of races. Kochi’s history is intertwined with that of the Portuguese, the Dutch, the British, the Arbas, the Jews, and the Chinese. No culture is a sacrosanct monolith that can remain untouched by other cultures that keep coming in from all over the world. ...
7 comments
Read more