Skip to main content

Do I Dare?


Alfred Prufrock was sitting in a dimly lit café when a young boy, who was yet to reach adolescence, walked in. The boy looked as inquisitive as Prufrock looked flurried.

‘Hello,’ the boy said. ‘You look so… lonely. And sad too.’

‘Sad? No, not sad. Just… contemplating. I am, as they say, measuring out my life with coffee spoons.’

‘Aw! That’s strange. On my planet, I measure things by sunsets. I love sunsets. How can you measure life with something so small as a coffee spoon?’

‘Did you say “my planet”?’

‘Well, yes. I come from another planet. I’ve been travelling for quite some time, you know. Went to numerous planets and asteroids and met many strange creatures. Quite a lot of them are cranky.’ The boy laughed gently, almost like an adult.

Prufrock looked at the boy with some scepticism and suspicion. He was already having too many worries of his own like whether he should part his hair in the middle and roll up the bottoms of his trousers.

‘They call me Little Prince,’ the boy said. He liked that name, he said, though he was no prince and he didn’t like the kings he met on certain planets. One king on an asteroid had no subjects but he wanted absolute obedience. “You can only yawn when I command you to,” the king told Little Prince [LP]. When LP told him yawning was beyond his control, the king said, “Okay then, I command you to yawn when you like.” Kings are funny people, LP thought. But princes are okay, he hoped.

‘Why don’t you sit down?’ Prufrock invited the boy. He liked LP now, perhaps the first person whom he liked. LP sat down on the chair opposite Prufrock. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘My pleasure,’ Prufrock replied with a little unease. He never felt comfortable with other people. He thought they all wore masks. The women whom he saw in the club discussed Michelangelo without ever knowing what the swan was doing between the legs of Leda. And the men said every now and then, “That’s not what I meant, that is not it, at all.”

Prufrock felt quite at ease with LP whose smile looked ethereal, angelic. Like Michelangelo smiling at La Pieta, for example.

LP narrated a few of his encounters with creatures on some of the planets he visited. There was this conceited person who wanted nothing from LP but flattery. On another planet was a drunkard who drank to forget how ashamed he was of drinking. There was a businessman on another planet who believed that all the stars in the cosmos were his private property and his frustration was he couldn’t count them.

‘I have a rose on my planet,’ LP said for a change. The rose grew up when LP was tired of the baobab weeds which could have engulfed his tiny planet had he not been pulling them out regularly. The rose looked different. Single and beautiful though LP didn’t like the thorns. The thorns were meant to protect the rose from the sheep, someone had told LP. But there were no sheep on LP’s planet.

‘Life is absurd,’ mused LP.

‘Indeed,’ agreed Prufrock. ‘I’m afraid of that absurdity. I’m afraid of people especially. Afraid of growing old, of rejection, of never being understood. I wonder… should I have dared more? Asked more of life?’

‘Dare?’ LP looked at Prufrock curiously. ‘You don’t need permission to ask questions, to love things, or to dare. I love my rose, take care of her, even though she’s difficult sometimes. But that’s what makes her special. It’s the time that I waste with my rose that makes her special. Have you dared to waste your time with someone or something?’

‘No… I wonder… People are absurd… I don’t dare to disturb the universe. It’s safer to remain quiet and unnoticed.’

‘You’re funny,’ LP grinned. ‘You remind me of the lamplighter I met on one of the planets. His job was to light a lamp at sunset and put it out at sunrise. But the gap in between was just a minute because he lived on a tiny little planet. He lit the lamp without understanding why. If only he could love what he was doing, that would make much difference. Just do what makes your heart feel warm.’

Prufrock stared at LP with considerable interest.

‘The heart is what matters, you know,’ LP went on. ‘What is essential is invisible to the eye.’

Prufrock got up from his seat and knelt down beside LP. He took the boy’s hand in his own and planted a gentle kiss on it. The kiss had a warmth that rushed to LP’s heart.

‘I think I can leave you now,’ LP said with his angelic smile.

PS. Alfred Prufrock is the protagonist of T S Eliot’s poem The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. Little Prince comes from Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s novella by the same title.

PPS. With this my Blogchatter Half-Marathon comes to an end. You can read the previous posts in this series below.

1. Heights of Evil

2. Pip Learns the Essential Lessons

3. Delusions and Ironies of Love

4. Good Old Days without meetings

5. Finding Enlightenment

6. An Oracle Gives up his Goddess

7. The Ruler Matters

8. The Agony of Ivan Karamazov

9. Live Life Fully

Comments

  1. Pradeep NairSeptember 9, 2024 at 11:40 AM

    Having two characters of contrasting nature makes it interesting!

    ReplyDelete
  2. MalvikaSSeptember 9, 2024 at 12:00 PM

    This is such an illuminating discussion and something which we can all benefit from.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yamini MacLeanSeptember 9, 2024 at 1:34 PM

    Hari Om
    👏🙏 YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
  4. Chinmayee Gayatree SahuSeptember 9, 2024 at 9:26 PM

    Very often do we forget that we have to do what our heart wants and your post is reminder to this. Very well written, Sir!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 9, 2024 at 9:31 PM

      Thanks, Chinmayee. People have so little time nowadays to listen to the heart!

      Delete
  5. docdivatravellerSeptember 10, 2024 at 6:41 AM

    That was a fantastic narration!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Liz A.September 10, 2024 at 7:48 AM

    Life is absurd, isn't it?

    ReplyDelete
  7. SuchitaSeptember 10, 2024 at 2:55 PM

    This was such a beautiful discussion. Especially the last line. The heart is what matters.

    ReplyDelete
  8. CareenaSeptember 18, 2024 at 10:18 PM

    Reading Little Prince was eye opening in a way. I always feel sad knowing LP being alone on his planet. But it's so profound.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
16 comments
Read more

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...
39 comments
Read more

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...
47 comments
Read more

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...
30 comments
Read more

Dharma and Destiny

  Illustration by Copilot Designer Unwavering adherence to dharma causes much suffering in the Ramayana . Dharma can mean duty, righteousness, and moral order. There are many characters in the Ramayana who stick to their dharma as best as they can and cause much pain to themselves as well as others. Dasharatha sees it as his duty as a ruler (raja-dharma) to uphold truth and justice and hence has to fulfil the promise he made to Kaikeyi and send Rama into exile in spite of the anguish it causes him and many others. Rama accepts the order following his dharma as an obedient son. Sita follows her dharma as a wife and enters the forest along with her husband. The brotherly dharma of Lakshmana makes him leave his own wife and escort Rama and Sita. It’s all not that simple, however. Which dharma makes Rama suspect Sita’s purity, later in Lanka? Which dharma makes him succumb to a societal expectation instead of upholding his personal integrity, still later in Ayodhya? “You were car...
28 comments
Read more