Tomichan Matheikal's blog

The Guest is a short story of Albert Camus that has remained in my consciousness for years. The protagonist, Daru, is a French schoolteacher who lives in his “schoolhouse” on a remote hillside “almost like a monk.” The setting is during the Algerian War of Independence against France. One day Daru finds himself ordered by a French gendarme to keep an Arab murderer with him for the night before taking him to the police authorities the next morning. Daru is not a shallow nationalist who will do anything that his country demands merely because he was born in that country. He believes in his own individual rights and moral duties more than in national obligations. What do patriotism and nationalism mean if they demand actions from you that go against your personal convictions? You become antinational. You can be labelled anything like ‘a terrorist’ or ‘an urban Naxal.’ You can be arrested and killed by your nation though you have done nothing wrong by your personal morality and convic...

  Job Job is one of the classical characters in the Old Testament of the Bible who is used by various preachers of Christianity to illustrate the ideals of patience, suffering and submission of the individual will to God’s will.  Job was a “perfect and upright man” and hence was a favourite of God.  He lived a rich and contented life with his good wife, seven sons, three daughters, countless servants, lot of land and herds of cattle.  The devil challenged God saying that if Job’s prosperity was taken away then he would lose his trust in God as well as his virtues.  God gives a free hand to the devil who goes on to wreck Job’s life totally.  Job’s cattle are stolen, servants have their throats slit by enemies, sheep are burnt to death, and his children are killed when a fierce storm knocks down his house.  When none of these tragedies succeeds in eroding Job’s trust in God, the devil inflicts a severe skin disease on him.  When Job sc...