Tomichan Matheikal's blog

By Gemini AI “Whether Ram of my imagination ever lived on this earth or not, the ancient ideal of the Ramayana is undoubtedly one of true democracy in which the meanest citizen could be sure of swift justice without an elaborate and costly procedure.” Mahatma Gandhi wrote that in one of his many Young India articles. The citizen is the centre of Rama Rajya . Not the king. Not the king’s ministers and minions. Not a coterie. Not even a religion or a language or a God. Even a washerman could raise a serious allegation against the king’s wife in the original Rama Rajya. Did they also draw cartoons on Rama the King? Probably not, because Rama was too good and didn’t require caricatures to see his own distortions. Did Rama send his soldiers to arrest stand-up comedians because they made jokes on him? Impossible. Did Rama have departments such as Enforcement and Income Tax meant for raiding the institutions or homes of his dissenters? Rama Rajya refers to the ideal rule of Rama, an er...

By Gemini AI Life is tough. Even the divine incarnations on the earth have had it tough. Rama and Jesus, for example, both endured much, both had to go through a lot of pain and suffering. If gods can’t have it any easy, how can we, ordinary mortals, expect anything better? We need to say a big ‘yes’ to life in spite of all those pains and sufferings. How does the Ramayana help us do that? Acceptance of Suffering as Part of Dharma Rama accepts his exile with resignation in a spirit of renunciation. He accepts it with grace though it means loss of his kingdom, his kingship, potential separation from his loving wife, and fights with rakshasas and other evil forces. At every step, he upholds dharma. We understand that suffering has a place in the cosmic order and there is no escape from it. We have to say a big yes to life in spite of all that suffering. Transformative Power of Trials Exile, abduction of spouse, dreadful war – these are not mere setbacks; they become catalysts...

Illustration by Gemini AI We need myths to understand the reality of people. “Art is a lie that makes us realise truth,” Pablo Picasso said famously. Every myth is an art. That is, myth is not truth, but it helps us understand truths. Because ‘the people’ is a mythical category, though historical as well. People are a mythical category because they represent a living community with a soul, a shared memory, and a common destiny – something deeper than what one can measure or pin down. People form an entity that is much bigger than what logic and reason can explain, with its many complex dimensions like belonging, hope, tradition, and dreams. No one can reduce any people to mere jingoistic slogans and narrowminded concepts like nationalism. There is a mystery that buoys up well above slogans and jingles. People constantly create relationships beyond themselves. There is something about them “that doesn’t love a wall,” if I may borrow an image from poet Robert Frost. It is not exclu...

The name of the tree caught my attention quickly. ‘Devil Tree’ was printed on the name card with the Malayalam name in bigger letters. Maggie and I were sauntering along the footpath by the river in Thommankuthu, a place in central Kerala. The river has elegant cascades in monsoon though it was a much feebler version now in summer. Maggie’s attention was drawn to the tree when I captured a pic of it with the intention of bringing it over here on my blog. Maggie knew that the tree was believed to be home to yakshis , female bloodsucking ghosts, in Kerala’s numerous legends and folklores. Her instinctive response was a recoil from the tree. Not all yakshis are evil, I recollected. Kerala’s most reverberant poet, Kadammanitta Ramakrishnan, describes yakshis as the vital energy of nature in one of his poems. On the perfumed path of Pala (Devil’s Tree) flowers, cool dewdrops lie scattered; In the rainbow's teardrops, her ghostly choir sings.   In the Malayalam original: ...

From the Russian war on Ukraine Can war be ever justified? This is one question that has disturbed me whenever I reflected on our epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata . Both have a war as the central action of their plots. There is much justification for the war too. Ironically, gods are involved in both the wars. It is a god, Krishna, who rouses up the warrior spirit of the reluctant Arjuna in the Mahabharata. Duty and Dharma are the justifications. The Ramayana has the same themes. Can’t even our gods avert wars? My personal studies of religions – both the scriptures and the practices by the devotees – convince me that gods are no more potent than their devotees. What are gods ultimately but our own alter egos minus the wicked shades? We create our gods in our own best images.   Wars become unavoidable then. Wars become unavoidable when certain individuals place themselves above our gods, the highest possible ideals that our limited human imaginations could conjure ...