A Letter to Self - 1

Dear ME, 

I should have written this letter a few years ago. But it did not occur to me until recently that I should jot down a few of my thoughts so that, whenever you feel lost, you could come back, read it and reassure yourself.

By now, you might have realised that life is not a bed of roses and there’ll be failures. You can either succumb to it or fight it. If you’re ready to fight, I’ve a mantra for you - If you fall seven times, get up eight times. Every time when failure slaps on your face, this is what you have to do. 

Majority of us are fatalists and we believe there’s nothing one could do to alter our fate. This is the greatest lie that has ever been told. We are all God’s children. Hence, how can he write bad destinies for some and good destines for others. Lord has a dream for us and expects us to show courage in pursuing our destiny.

And how to do it – By recognising our ‘Calling or Purpose’ in life and sticking to it.

Mind you! It’s a Herculean task. 

When God made the world, the Holy Spirit was hovering above the waters and it is the SOUL of GOD. When you show courage to pursue Lord’s dream, he will put his soul inside you which will give you utmost strength to pursue your destiny.

If you take one step towards your purpose, God will take seven steps for you. If God is for us, who can be against us?

God bless

Remember what William Ernest Henley said in his poem ' Invictus'- " I am the MASTER OF MY FATE; I am the CAPTAIN OF MY SOUL." 

pic courtesy: Rife Magazine

The Myth of Kappiri Muthappan - an African Spirit

 Every day, as the dusk falls, Shyamala would light a lamp in a small stone structure in front of her house. Once in a month, she would offer meat, toddy, cigarettes and boiled eggs to the deity installed in the structure, hoping that it would ward off all evils.

The folk deity who goes by the name ‘Kappiri Muthappan’ is a saviour not only for Shyamala’s family.Around 15 families living at Veli, Fort Kochi and Mattancherry  in Kochi, Kerala worship the deity, a cigar-smoking treasure-guarding spirit, which has its roots in Africa.

The lore goes like this: when the Portuguese arrived in Kerala, about 500 years ago, they brought with them many ‘Kappiris’ or native Africans as slaves. But the whole scene changed when the Dutch usurped power from them. It was a violent takeover.

With little time to take away their amassed wealth,they buried them in deep trenches along the bodies of ‘kappiris’ whom they slaughtered, in the fervent belief that their ghosts would guard these treasures. But the Portuguese never returned.

As the years passed by, the tale assumed the nature of a myth and the people started believing in ‘Kappiri Muthappan’ who rests on a wall called ‘Kappiri Mathil’ (‘Negro’ wall), smoking a cigar.

Jaya Ramesh Pai says she has observed the ritual from the day she bought the house where she is living now.

“When I bought the house, the stone structure was there and the previous owner said that it would do me good if I observe the ritual. I light the lamp everyday and give the offering once every six months,” she said.

Jaya said being a Brahmin, she offers the deity bread, cigarettes and delicacies made of rice flour, instead of meat. The offerings are later consumed as ‘prasadam’.

There are around 20 such walls in and around Mattancherry. You can light a candle too.

If you are someone who is fascinated by the stories of ‘ spirits’ and ‘ ghosts’, please do try to see such places when you are in Kochi.

Pictures Courtesy : Artist Dinesh R Shenoy

Published here as : Kappiri Muthappan - From Slaves to Folk Deity  ( The New Indian Express )

“ Did you come across any such place? If so, please do share?”

How did ‘The Shooting Star’ change my Life

 It was 2016 and little by little, my world had started to crumble. I did not know what was wrong, but something was amiss. It seemed the fire in me had ceased to exist. It was during those days of uncertainty that I stumbled upon a blog called ‘The Shooting Star’. And the one image after reading it is still vivid in my mind.

Pic Courtesy: exemplore.com

On a December night, there was a girl in her early twenties, lying on the roof of a watch tower, gazing at the millions of stars twinkling above, in the lone desert of Rann of Kutch in Gujarat. It just blew me away.

The expanse of the desert was such that though well-versed with its every nook and cranny, the friend who took her to the watchtower often swerved his vehicle so that it would leave tire – prints on the land and it wouldn’t be a task steering through the desert, while returning.

The image often touched my face as a waft of fresh air and kept recurring in my mind. I didn’t know ‘why’.

I wasn’t much of a traveller, then. Though it hadn’t brought overnight changes, the image certainly kindled a spark in me which was about to blaze in the years to come.

I didn’t know then, that the sky, the stars, the moon, the trees, the plants could talk to me.

Years after, when she came up with a book called ‘The Shooting Star – A Girl, Her Backpack and the world', I pre-ordered it. So far, I have read it twice. I went looking for the same image in the book. This time, many other images tagged along. I felt I was there trekking in the mountains, scooping water from the stream, frolicking under the cascading waterfall and they kept me awake in my dreams. I always felt tranquil whenever they barged into my mind. 

The Shooting Star is the story of a young girl called Shivya Nath, who gave up her home, sold her belongings at a young age of 23 and made the world, her home.

 I often wondered why I kept going back to this blog. What was in it? Though I started loving the idea of travelling, I never wanted to abandon everything and take off to some uncharted territory.

Whatever my confusions were, I eventually mustered the courage at least to quit my monotonous job and took off to another city in the neighbouring state seeking new pastures. And that was the beginning. The city of dreams as it was called crushed me to the core. I felt like a fish out of water with nobody to turn to. I knew I was sinking and the city doused the inner flames and left me with the ashes of my dreams.

 I came back two years later, found another job that paid me well but gave no contentment. It is often when life hits rock bottom that most of us tend to think about our purpose in life. I was no different. There were times when I felt there’s nothing left to live for.  

Shivya says in her book “We tend to make big changes in life only when tragedy strikes. We tend to look for alternative paths onlywhen we have hit rock bottom. We tend to ask existential questions about happiness only when we are at our most miserable.”She also asks “But what about the tragedy of a mundane, average, unfulfilling life?”

But life is different for different people. Some realise the mundanities of everyday life very fast while some take years, just like me.

I don’t want to be a travel blogger, but a traveller and a storyteller. And for many years it remained a mystery to me that why these images were keeping me awake.

Seasons changed, the pandemic struck and I was locked down in my home. My small library became my world. I read, wrote, pondered over anything and everything under the sun. And it struck that those images wanted to tell me a different story – the story of freedom, liberation, breaking the inhibitions and many more.

She knew where her heart was. The vast expanse of the sky, the desert, the mountains, the waterfalls were asking me to look within and summon the strength to live my life as truthfully I can be.

Yesterday, in the night I opened my window and looked at the sky. It was drizzling as the southwest monsoon had already arrived in Kerala. There were no stars but I saw a firefly and it spoke volumes.

Read my another post here : How a ' Serene Place' could be haunting for some

'Cards on the Table' by Agatha Christie

Mr Shaitana was a person of dubious character. He was attending a snuff box exhibition when he ran into Hercule Poirot, the detective. Shaitana was quick enough to invite him for dinner and lured him to meet some strange invitees.

There was something peculiar about the invitation. A collector of many strange things, Shaitana also nurtured a macabre habit of extracting dark hidden secrets from people. Some of the invitees to the dinner invitation also had one. They were murderers who had gotten away easily.

 Finally, the fateful day had come. After the dinner, the guests decided to play bridge and divided themselves into two groups.

When the first group consisted of Dr Roberts, Major Despard, Mrs Lorrimer and Miss Anne Meredith, the second group consisted of Hercule Poirot, Superintendent Battle of Scotland Yard, detective fiction writer Mrs Adriane Oliver and Colonel Race, a retired secret service operative.

Both of the groups sat in two different rooms while Shaitana, the host did not take part in the game but sat in the first room by the fire, observing the players.

When they approached their host to bid goodbye, after the bridge, to their utter shock, they found him murdered in his chair. He was stabbed in the neck with a stiletto.

In no time, Superintendent Battle took charge of the situation. It was then, the players in the second room realised that Shaitana had carefully picked his guests. While the guests in the second room were associated with investigation and authority, his choice of guests in the first room was a hint from Shaitana that they were possibly murderers who had gotten away after committing it. Shaitana had suggested the same thing to Hercule Poirot when they met at the snuff box exhibition.

Never in the wildest of his dreams, he might have thought that by inviting such people he was inviting his own death.

According to Christie, this was Hercule Poirot’s favourite case though Hastings, his companion, found it dull. For a change, she had come up with three other sleuths along with Poirot to nab the culprit from among the four possible murderers. It’s not mostly the clues which had helped the four detectives in their sleuthing but pure psychology.

Though I understood the basic plot, the reading became a bit strenuous when Poirot decided to analyse the suspects from their bridge scores. I don’t know how to play bridge. Besides, there were many twists and turns.

 

How a ‘ Serene’ place could be ‘Haunting’ for some !

 It was a dead end. We stood in the middle of nowhere as the Gps of our car (uber) mistook the place as our destination. There was no sign of life. The driver looked around bewildered, as he found nothing indicating where to proceed. I was on my way to attend a conference.

Without loosing much time; I phoned my colleague who rushed to pick me up. We got lost as we took the wrong turning and the place was at a stone’s throw away from the deserted place.

Finally, when I arrived where the conference was being held, for once, I thought I had reached my home state, Kerala. It had been a year since I was pining for my native place. I was living in Bangalore, then. The hustle and bustle of the city had literally started to take a toll on me. And there were no friends and families within the reach.

I could unwind with some greenery around. But as I lived amidst a food hub, the place was always abuzz with activities. I sought solace in a church nearby, during the evenings.

Courtesy: Visthar website

Sprawled over six acres of land with mango trees and many others, the names of which I am not familiar with, the place was a great solace to me. Amidst them, here and there, just like islands stood small houses with tiled roofs. It reminded me of childhood days before the onslaught of technology. The knowledge that I could stay in one of them just cheered me up.

There was a gigantic well in the middle the steps of which led to its bottom. And you could see it as there was no water in it. No doubt, I was quickly taken by its beauty, but it gave me the chills too.

 I found out later that the well could have a monstrous face with water to its brim as one of my colleagues showed me one such photograph. The mouth of the well was too wide that I felt it could devour you if you weren’t careful.

During the recess, I found many of my colleagues going down the steps with much ease and I watched them with wide eyes as I could go only a few steps. I was scared that the weaver ants on the steps would bite me and I would fall down.

Besides, though not intentionally, the conversation started to revolve around deaths by falling into huge wells. It might have been a sheer coincidence as I happened to notice Rajkumar, one of my colleagues intently listening to our conversation. Since he had come from Bellary (a major city in the state of Karnataka) which is more than five hours away, he was staying in Visthar for three days.

It was the time I was seriously thinking about travel blogging and even rejigged one of my blogs for it. But I hadn’t mustered the courage to go to far away places (I still haven’t).  So, a shout out to all those travellers and travel bloggers out there, I hold you in high esteem…

Hence, I thought of going there again and spend a few days to write about it.

To throw more light about the place, Visthar in Bangalore is a secular civil society organisation committed to social justice and peace.  The environmental consciousness had made them design their campus to be an Eco – sanctuary.

The knowledge that I could spend a few days there at a reasonable price made my decision firm to come back which never happened. But as I write this, I regret it deeply as my whole being wanted to be there away from all the mundanities of life.

 It was almost dark when the first day of our conference ended. The place suddenly had an eerie feeling about it. I felt like predators lurking in the dark, ready to pounce upon its prey when the time comes. But that made the place all the more exciting.

Though the next day began with a positive note, Rajkumar appeared to be tired like a withered flower. The Rajkumar I knew was a different person. With a strong physique, he always appeared ready to take the bull by its horns.

It was then I came to know that something strange happened in his room, the previous night. Upon coaxing, he took me and one of my colleagues to his room.

Though the room was big, the two wooden cots with a mosquito net frame and a large almirah made it a bit cluttered. The cots were put one after the other. Surprisingly, neat and tidy bathroom appeared larger than the room. As the building stood independent of each other, even you scream, through the fog, it would not reach anybody.

I saw a blanket lying near to the second cot. It was on the first he slept, the other night.

And he started narrating the incident. It was around 11.30 pm. He tucked himself in a blanket and was slowly slipping into sleep when he felt that someone was trying to pull the blanket off from him.

When he opened his eyes, he couldn’t see anybody but the blanket was lying on the floor.

He woke up, checked the bathroom and the large almirah. There was nobody.  “But I felt a presence,” he said with fear still lingering in his eyes.

Much to his dismay, it occurred several times and he tried calling his colleagues but to no avail. Though he opened the door, out of fear, he couldn’t see anything through the fog.

He was petrified to the core that he shrunk himself into one of the corners of his room and did not remember when he dozed off.

The next morning when Rajkumar woke up his jeans, which was hung on the mosquito net frame was lying outside the door.

My colleague was making faces as if Rajkumar was telling a blatant lie. But I couldn’t think of it as such. I asked him to recount his experience during the conference. He gently refused, saying people wouldn’t believe him.

“I knew what I went through last night. But If I narrate my experience, I would be a laughing stock among them.”

He is right. Our experiences, thoughts, feelings are our own. And it can’t be expected that others too might accept them the way we experience.

” Have you come across any such experiences in your life?”

A 5 year old write up and a ' Gentle Reminder for me

I call myself ' His' Prodigal Daughter

 My life had hit rock bottom. It had happened several times, but this time, it was bad …thoroughly bad and I stood groping in the dark thinking I might not even survive it.

And that was scary.

My parents came to my rescue and pampered me as if I were their two year old daughter. They were bewildered as they never saw me absolutely befuddled. I was their bold daughter who not only ventured out seeking new pastures, but made it on her own.

Things were drastically different a year ago. I was a like a broken glass, frantically trying to fix the fragmented pieces… But there were more cracks appearing and the pieces were falling apart.

When nothing is going your way, the only resort is to turn to God and I was no different. Though I called myself a believer, I had never been a practicing Christian.

To my surprise, one evening, I was there in the church, attending Holy Mass, weeping and tearing my heart out.

Fortunately, I never asked ‘Him’ the question ‘Why me’. I should say, I never dared to ask it since I knew my life was much better than so many people around me.

But why do I get hurt all the time? This question nagged me and I badly wanted an answer. And yes, there are answers. Getting those are a process and you have to live through it.

If you ask me ‘do you enjoy it?’ Yes, by all means.

Is it tough? Of course

Do you think you will get through it? I believe ‘ Yes’

Before, I proceed; let me tell you this is not a blog which has a religious hue. I just want to share my experience with God. There are no intermediaries between me and him. Just us…and that’s so beautiful, soulful, tranquil…

But the blog is not confined to that alone, but all those beautiful experience that followed suit as part of my tryst with my Lord.

I call myself his ‘Prodigal Daughter’. I have been away and now I have come back.

2019 has been eventful and 2020 is going to be mine.

With loads of love,

Shalet Jimmy

 

 

In between ‘Planning’ happens Life….

 

Sometimes you feel like doing a lot of things.

And if you have attended one of those capacity building conferences, you will definitely decide to plan your each step.

For the expert says: “the goal will continue to remain distant unless you plan.”

Thoroughly motivated, I decide to plan…

I shut myself away from everything and I plan…

I make daily planner, weekly planner, monthly planner, annual planner and many other planners on my drive and forget most of the planners barring the basic ones.

I feel as if I am almost there.

Then one fine morning, I find myself sitting and blinking at the wall, doing nothing.

After a couple of days, I look at my petrified self and say “Why don’t you just get out of the house and get some fresh air.”

“Yes, you’re right, ” I say.

Soon, I get out of the house, attend the evening mass.

After that, I immerse myself in the all pervading silence of the church.

I light candles.

Have my little conversation with the Jewish Carpenter.

Then sit under the shade of a large Mango tree in the compound of the church.

Walk home on a well lit road.

Sometimes, I look at the sky.

And pass a flower shop effusing the fragrance of jasmine flowers.

Come back and make dinner.

Read a few pages, type a blog post and pitch a new story idea.

And there I am… fast asleep.

Next morning, I wake up, pray and make my bed.

Then I tick mark the things I did the previous night, holding a cup of brewing coffee in the other hand.

And I realise these little pleasures which we conveniently brush aside while planning a larger picture makes real life.

- Shalet Jimmy💖

 I started blogging way back in 2008. It was a time I knew nothing but writing. I was clueless regarding the technical know how on how to handle a blog. Still I wrote and made friends. Then after a few years, people started migrating to wordpress and I could feel the connection that bound us slowly getting severed. 

Now I am sitting in front of the laptop clueless on what to write.