Skip to main content

On the other side

PM Modi at Guruvayur Temple

A contemporary parable

The centipede trying to cross the road in Guruvayur this morning was held back by the barrage of traffic that moved in an unusual manner. The creature was not aware that the Prime Minister was coming to the temple for various reasons. There was the wedding of a local BJP candidate’s daughter. Praying at certain temples is one of PM’s ingenious strategies not very unlike his roadshows and other public appearances.

The centipede was not aware of all this. Ordinary denizens of any place will have no time to understand high-level political strategies and dramatics. For example, the centipede had never heard of the legend of the Meditation Cave in Kedarnath. The PM went all the way up the Himalayas to meditate in a cave near the Kedarnath Temple. He changed his costumes as he usually did before every public performance and squatted like the Buddha in the cave. For once he did not wave at anyone or anything. Instead he shut his eyes and went into deep contemplation. After a few moments, he opened his eyes saying, “I’m enlightened.” But then he saw all the videographers and media personnel around and muttered to himself, “Shit! Drama again.”

Costumes were changed many times this morning too. Guruvayur temple has its own dress code. There are many other codes too. For example, the celebrated singer K J Yesudas, who has given classical performances in many temples, was never allowed to enter the Guruvayur temple just because of one of those codes in spite of the many requests he submitted to the terrestrial gods in Guruvayur.  

Film stars and political stars and other stars as well as starlings and starlets had already passed by the waiting centipede. Then came heavily armed and armoured vehicles with all kinds of security men on them. Some big gun is here, the centipede muttered to himself.

When all the rush was over there was a strange hush. The centipede crossed the road.

Having crossed the road with so much patience and effort, the centipede was walking away from where all the stars and starlets were. The reporter of Vishwadarshan TV observed the centipede and turned the camera on it. Thrusting the microphone to its head, the reporter asked, “Why are you going away?”

The creature said rather mysteriously, “I have crossed over to the other side.”



Comments

  1. A peek into post 'elections' scenario.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hari OM
    You are the Aesop of our times... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
  3. Replies
    1. Politics in India is now a colossal entertainment. We have a superhero, not any ordinary protagonist.

      Delete
  4. In dreams, a centipede represents progressing forward despite of difficult challenges. It signifies that your road will be fraught with obstacles and distractions. In your dreams, a centipede encourages you to be optimistic. It counsels you to let go of your anger, contempt, and any other negative feelings.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This is so different and nice, Dora! The centipede is in my subconscious!

      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

Two Nuns and two questions

The nuns kept in custody  Two Catholic nuns were arrested on 25 July 2025 at Durg railway station for allegedly trafficking tribal women from Narayanpur in Chhattisgarh to Agra in UP. Today’s newspapers in Kerala have expressed their contempt of the act more vehemently than I had expected. It seems secularism has hope yet in this country. For those who are not aware of the incident, two nuns were arrested because some criminals of a depraved organisation called Bajrang Dal in Chhattisgarh chose to conclude that the nuns were committing the crime of human-trafficking. Since that charge wouldn’t stick, because the women confessed that they were going voluntarily to take up jobs with the help of the nuns in order to raise their families from miserable poverty in a country that claims to be a $5-tillion-economy, another charge was fabricated that the nuns had indulged in religious conversion. Now let us look at certain facts. Though I keep questioning the Christian churches for...

Missing Women of Dharmasthala

The entrance to the temple Dharmasthala:  The Shadows Behind the Sanctum Ananya Bhatt, a young medical student from Manipal, visited the Dharmasthala Temple and she never returned to her hostel. She vanished without a trace. That was in 2003. Her mother, Sujata Bhatt, a stenographer working with the CBI, rushed to the temple town in search of her daughter. Some residents told her that they had seen Ananya walking with the temple officials. The local police refused to help in any way. Soon Sujata was abducted by three men, assaulted, and rendered unconscious. She woke up months later in a hospital in Bangalore (Bengaluru). Now more than two decades later, she is back in the temple premises to find her daughter’s remains and perform her last rites. Because a former sanitation worker of the temple came to the local court a few days back with a human skeleton and the confession that he had buried countless schoolgirls in uniform and other young women in the temple premises. This ma...

Capital Punishment is not Revenge

Govindachamy when Kerala High Court confirmed his death sentence The Bible suggests that it is better for one man to die if that death helps others to live better [ John 11: 50 ]. Forgive me for applying that to a criminal today, though Jesus made that statement in a benign theological context. A notorious and hardcore criminal has escaped prison in Kerala. Fourteen years ago he assaulted a young girl who was travelling all alone in a late evening train, going back home from her workplace. The girl jumped out of the running train to save herself from this beast. But he jumped after her and raped her. The postmortem report suggested that he raped her twice, the second being when she had already fallen unconscious. And then he killed her hitting her head with a stone. Do you think that creature is human? I wrote about this back then: A Drop of Tear For You, Soumya . The people of Kerala demanded capital punishment for this creature, the brute called Govindachamy. He is inhu...

Gods, Guns and Missionaries

Book Review Title: Gods, Guns and Missionaries: The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity Author: Manu S Pillai Publisher: Penguin Random House India, 2024 Pages: 564 (about half of which consists of Notes) There never was any monolithic religion called Hinduism. Different parts of India practised Hinduism in its own ways, with its own gods and rituals and festivals. Some of these were even mutually opposed. For example, Vamana who is a revered incarnation of Vishnu in North India becomes a villain in Kerala’s Onam legends. What has become of this protean religion of infinite variety and diversity today in the hands of its ‘missionary’ political leaders? Manu S Pillai’s book ends with V D Savarkar’s contributions to the religion with a subtle hint that it is his legacy that is driving the present version of the religion in the name of Hindutva. The last lines of the book, leaving aside the Epilogue titled ‘What is Hinduism?’, are telltale. “Life did not give Savarkar all he...