Tomichan Matheikal's blog

The Malayalam poem which inspired this post A poem that I read in a Malayalam journal yesterday continues to haunt me up to this moment. A very short poem, just 16 short lines, it is titled Rahim and Ram . Unable to catch sleep, Ram is wriggling convulsively in his new temple. From beneath the temple’s sanctum sanctorum rises the adhan in the fractured voice of a mosque’s debris. Rahim apologises to Ram and says, ‘This is the Kali Yug. Its humans don’t know that we are merely characters created by poets.’ This afternoon a young friend sent me a query on WhatsApp. “Is objective truth the same as objective reality?” My response: The Ram Temple in Ayodhya is objective reality. But is it objective truth? The first prime minister of India asserted vehemently that India did not need more gods and temples. He said dams were modern India’s temples and went on to construct the Nagarjuna Sagar, the Hirakud, the Damodar Valley dams, etc. When some malicious person infiltrated the Babri Mas...

I just received a query from a friend on WhatsApp. Have you received an invitation to visit the Ram Mandir Pran Pratishtha? I responded with a lot of laughing emoticons. Then I thought Is it a matter for laughter? I am a citizen of India whose Prime Minister is going to inaugurate the temple. As a citizen, I deserve an invitation. Otherwise, the inauguration (whatever name one may give to it in local languages) should be carried out by anyone other than a government official. What has the government got to do with a place of worship without involving the citizens? I’m grateful to my friend for provoking me to write this. I’m reminded of a parable I read in a cynical novel a few years ago. Some crows were sitting on an electricity cable as they always do in India as if they were mocking our entire systems. Even our electric power can do them no harm, let alone the semiliterate politicians. Then came a dove, pure white dove, from somewhere and sat a few feet away on t...

Image of the Ayodhya Temple from NDTV Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be inaugurating the Rs 18,000 crore temple of Rama on 22 Jan 2024. Any patriotic Indian should be filled with nationalist pride. Or, is it religious pride? Cultural pride? Well, you choose. As an Indian whose patriotism is highly questionable, I chose to contemplate on the very existence of Lord Rama. Google instructs me that Rama was born in Treta Yuga, the second period in the Hindu classification of history. Treta Yuga stretched from 2,163,102 BCE to 867,102 BCE, according to Google. The same Google tells us that homo sapiens arrived on earth some 300,000 years ago. Lord Rama lived long, long before homo sapiens evolved. “Hanuman was Lord Rama’s real subject,” a friend suggested. All the others are creatures of Valmiki’s imagination. “Mythology, man,” the friend reminded helpfully. Then what about Lord Rama? Did he evolve before time? A premature homo sapiens? I’m inquisitive. “Don’t you remember Plato?”...