Coal!

rgsrinivasan · Dec 24, 2012

Coming to the end of the year, I feel a bit nostalgic and sad too. "You are not the only one!", I hear some of you say. The problem is that, feeling nostalgic is good, but it often grips when least expected. And then, it brings you some hues which are so bright even now that you never wanted to be out of them. Alas! Its not possible. One of the reasons a flashback is so liked is that, you already know the outcome and hence not worried about it much and concentrating on other things in detail perhaps.

On a saturday, while walking along a road that led to my house, I saw an ironing man cleaning his heavy coal iron box. He scraped the ironing surface with some kind of a brush after dumping the ash nearby. Then he slowly filled that with burning red hot coal. On the other side, I saw the black coal pieces too. Suddenly I watched my mind drifting back to those early days, where we used earthen stove. Ah! I was a little boy then, and naughty as well. Those were the days we had no gas stoves and there was a scarcity for kerosene too. Most of the homes had earthen stoves as well. I can still remember that unique aroma of sambar or rasam that was boiling then. I was thrilled to join my elder siblings to ignite the stove first. We used coir, old papers, camphor and what not? The coal that we used, would not get ignited that easily.

But once it caught up, it lasted for much longer time and that smell and watching the red hot coal, often left me speechless. How can it be so beautiful? Is that an infinitesimal part of our lord who happily dances all the time? I don't know. Going back to it again, I used to peep every now and then and stealthily place a paper or something in to that fire and watch the fire slowly engulfing it. I felt that fire always had welcoming hands then. After the cooking was over, at times, I got a chance to roast some papads in that stove. I would steal some more always [they knew, I am sure now, but gave in]. I'd roast them and take as much as I wanted then itself.

And in the end, when it was all over, I would see the coal pieces burnt completely and only ash remained. That too would be warm. Perhaps purifying ourselves makes us good and warm? I too feel something else now. Looking at the ash now, I was a bit awed as well. It was completely utilized, in doing something good and was well spent.

Won't we love our lives to be the same, friends?

"What is the single most important
Thing in life?", I thought many times
Each time I came up with a potent
Lead but yet failed many times.

Is it fame or loads of money
That one should be having
In ways good or others many?
It was all so confusing.

What about love and being loved?
I reckoned this just should be.
But what is the meaning of this love?
I neither found one nor agree.

Perhaps the best thing one can do
Is to be useful in some good way
At least to one who can't afford to
Lead a life due to destiny's play.

We all are like that raw black coal
With impurities so many too.
When ignited, it burns to the whole,
Turning to a lovely grey hue.

The coal that burns fiercely now
Doesn't know to whom it serves.
If only we follow that from now
This world'll soon be full of love.

Not all can get rich or be famous.
Yet in us, lies an enormous
Responsibility to lead our lives
It is to better many other lives.

gayathrivijay12 · Dec 24, 2012

A superb snippet rgs...Especially the poem is just spontaneous and fantabulous!

rgsrinivasan · Dec 24, 2012

gayathrivijay12 said: ↑

A superb snippet rgs...Especially the poem is just spontaneous and fantabulous!
Click to expand...

Very many thanks for your appreciation and for being the first to respond, GayathriVijay.
I am so happy and relieved now. -rgs

Viswamitra · Dec 25, 2012

Dear RGS,

We are unfinished product like a coal when we take a life. When we build character, we (coal) start shining like burning coal. The fire is the character we build over a period of time. When we become ash, we can die holding our head high if we were useful for the purpose to satisfy other fellow beings.

Thank you for presenting this wonderful thought.

Viswa

Cheeniya · Dec 25, 2012

My dear RGS
Thanks to my myopic eyes, I read the title as 'Goal' and proceeded to read this thread. At the end of the year, it is customary for all of us to rue the goals that we fixed for ourselves at the start of the year but could never get anywhere near them. So when I read the words 'So you are not one of them', I felt gratified that there were others too who missed their goals. In fact, I am very famous for missing my goals and the few goals that I could achieve were due to the benevolence of people who kept shifting the goal posts to the vicinity of where I was!

Moving to your second para, I was getting a bit confused. The mention of the ironing man cleaning his iron box, the aroma of sambar and rasam and your eagerness to ignite the stove seemed a far way off the title of Goal and it did not strike me even then to look at the title again. I went ahead and completed reading the thread. I was amazed at your brilliance of comparing our life to a piece of burning goal. I knew that this was a special gift that only poets were blessed with. Your mention of roasting a pappad in the stove reminded me of Ramana Maharshi's profound song 'Appalam ittu paaru, adhai saappittu un asaiyai theeru' (Roast a pappad and quench your desire by eating it). On reading the final sentence that ash symbolised the finality of a well spent life, I could fathom your thoughts.

Paramacharya would often say that everything in life is liable to change except ash because ash cannot become anything else. He would urge that it should be our goal to aim at that stage beyond which there could be no change implying that we continue to burn as long as we have desires in us resulting in our acquiring different stages in the cycle of birth and death but once we banish all our desires, there would be no fuel for us to continue burning and reach the ash stage, the ever constant, unchanging stage. The purpose of applying the ash on our forehead is to remind us of the Goal of our life .

A great thread RGS from which a lot can be inferred.
Sri

PushpavalliSrinivasan · Dec 25, 2012

Dear rgs,
You have put the reality of life or can I say the illusion of life in a nutshell comparing with the coal.

A candle also sacrifice itself by giving light and nothing remains when it burns out. There is much to learn from

coal and candle.
PS

shyamala1234 · Dec 25, 2012

Dear rgs,

Started with an ironing man and ended with a very difficult philosophy to live with.

We are coal like things, I agree. We cannot strive to become ashes by relinquishing many things and live a complete idealistic life...in the present scenario. If we can be like that nothing more does any one wants? Let us do our duties properly, spread some love and help to people around us. I think that we all can do.
Thank you for a good blog.

Syamala

rgsrinivasan · Dec 26, 2012

Viswamitra said: ↑

Dear RGS,

We are unfinished product like a coal when we take a life. When we build character, we (coal) start shining like burning coal. The fire is the character we build over a period of time. When we become ash, we can die holding our head high if we were useful for the purpose to satisfy other fellow beings.

Thank you for presenting this wonderful thought.

Viswa
Click to expand...

Thats a nice sum-up Viswa. Very glad to receive your feedback. Besides, that is one of the angles that I concentrated more in this post, and added more support to it in the verses. But I feel that I have not been very clear at all in expressing my thoughts in this post. Still a rookie in everything, you know? Thanks for your support. -rgs

rgsrinivasan · Dec 26, 2012

Cheeniya said: ↑

My dear RGS
Thanks to my myopic eyes, I read the title as 'Goal' and proceeded to read this thread. At the end of the year, it is customary for all of us to rue the goals that we fixed for ourselves at the start of the year but could never get anywhere near them. So when I read the words 'So you are not one of them', I felt gratified that there were others too who missed their goals. In fact, I am very famous for missing my goals and the few goals that I could achieve were due to the benevolence of people who kept shifting the goal posts to the vicinity of where I was!

Moving to your second para, I was getting a bit confused. The mention of the ironing man cleaning his iron box, the aroma of sambar and rasam and your eagerness to ignite the stove seemed a far way off the title of Goal and it did not strike me even then to look at the title again. I went ahead and completed reading the thread. I was amazed at your brilliance of comparing our life to a piece of burning goal. I knew that this was a special gift that only poets were blessed with. Your mention of roasting a pappad in the stove reminded me of Ramana Maharshi's profound song 'Appalam ittu paaru, adhai saappittu un asaiyai theeru' (Roast a pappad and quench your desire by eating it). On reading the final sentence that ash symbolised the finality of a well spent life, I could fathom your thoughts.

Paramacharya would often say that everything in life is liable to change except ash because ash cannot become anything else. He would urge that it should be our goal to aim at that stage beyond which there could be no change implying that we continue to burn as long as we have desires in us resulting in our acquiring different stages in the cycle of birth and death but once we banish all our desires, there would be no fuel for us to continue burning and reach the ash stage, the ever constant, unchanging stage. The purpose of applying the ash on our forehead is to remind us of the Goal of our life .

A great thread RGS from which a lot can be inferred.
Sri
Click to expand...

Wow! Thats a very nice feedback which excelled what I wrote, Cheeniya Sir. Honoured to receive it. Besides, one of the many advantages of posting something here is that, I get to know more and more, from the feedback from all of you, which feed me to try scribbling something again, like a child. I felt that I should have stuck to a particular line of thought rather than mixing many shades in one. This can be taken as lack of experience as well. But it was more of an introspection too, where I wrote what came to my mind, when I saw that burning red pieces. Thanks a lot. Your motivation definitely helps. -rgs

rgsrinivasan · Dec 26, 2012

Pushpavalli Srinivasan said: ↑

Dear rgs,
You have put the reality of life or can I say the illusion of life in a nutshell comparing with the coal.

A candle also sacrifice itself by giving light and nothing remains when it burns out. There is much to learn from

coal and candle.
PS
Click to expand...

Very many thanks for your nice feedback Madam. I thought not just about the sacrifice angle when I wrote about coal. But it aptly fits in. Thanks a lot for your time and feedback. -rgs