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. magiceyeJanuary 17, 2024 at 6:23 PM

    A peek into post 'elections' scenario.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yamini MacLeanJanuary 17, 2024 at 10:18 PM

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

    ReplyDelete
  3. Liz A.January 17, 2024 at 10:49 PM

    Ah, the drama of men...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 18, 2024 at 6:21 AM

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

      Delete
  4. peppylady (Dora)January 18, 2024 at 3:17 AM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalJanuary 18, 2024 at 6:22 AM

      This is so different and nice, Dora! The centipede is in my subconscious!

      Delete
  5. Rajeev MoothedathJanuary 18, 2024 at 5:56 AM

    Very nice...

    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

Don Bosco

Don Bosco (16 Aug 1815 - 31 Jan 1888) In Catholic parlance, which flows through my veins in spite of myself, today is the Feast of Don Bosco. My life was both made and unmade by Don Bosco institutions. Any great person can make or break people because of his followers. Religious institutions are the best examples. I’m presenting below an extract from my forthcoming book titled Autumn Shadows to celebrate the Feast of Don Bosco in my own way which is obviously very different from how it is celebrated in his institutions today. Do I feel nostalgic about the Feast? Not at all. I feel relieved. That’s why this celebration. The extract follows. Don Bosco, as Saint John Bosco was popularly known, had a remarkably good system for the education of youth.   He called it ‘preventive system’.   The educators should be ever vigilant so that wrong actions are prevented before they can be committed.   Reason, religion and loving kindness are the three pillars of that syste...
2 comments
Read more

Coffee can be bitter

The dawns of my childhood were redolent of filtered black coffee. We were woken up before the birds started singing in the lush green village landscape outside home. The sun would split the darkness of the eastern sky with its splinter of white radiance much after we children had our filtered coffee with a small lump of jaggery. Take a bite of the jaggery and then a sip of the coffee. Coffee was a ritual in our home back then. Perhaps our parents believed it would jolt our neurons awake and help us absorb our lessons before we set out on the 4-kilometre walk to school after all the morning rituals at home. After high school, when I left home for further studies at a distant place, the ritual of the morning coffee stopped. It resumed a whole decade later when I completed my graduation and took up a teaching job in Shillong. But I had lost my taste for filtered coffee by then; tea took its place. Plain tea without milk – what is known as red tea in most parts of India. Coffee ret...
18 comments
Read more

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more

The Life of an Activist

Book Review   Title: I am What I am: A Memoir Author: Sunitha Krishnan Publisher: Westland, Chennai, 2024 Pages: 284 Sunitha Krishnan is more of a conqueror than a survivor. She was gangraped at the age of 15, and that too because she had started working for the uplift of the girls in a village. She used to interact with the girls, motivate them to go back to school, give them remedial classes, and discuss topics like menstrual hygiene “and other intimate issues”. Some men of the village didn’t like such “revolutionary” moves coming from a little girl. Eight such men violated Sunitha Krishnan one evening as she was returning home from the village. “Any sexual assault is a traumatic event and leaves deep scars on the psyche of the survivor. The shame, the guilt, the feeling of being tainted, the self-loathing that it brings in its wake is universal. I was no exception.” That is how the third chapter, title ‘The Girl Who Did Not Cry’, begins. Sunitha Krishnan didn’t l...
10 comments
Read more