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...

Source Buridan’s Ass, named after 14 th century French philosopher Jean Buridan, is both hungry and thirsty.  It is placed midway between a stack of hay and a pail of water.  If the ass decides to exercise its free will, it will starve to death.  When it turns to the haystack, it can exercise its freedom to choose water first instead.  And when it turns to the water, its free will can interfere again.  Thus it can go on exercising its freedom of choice until it dies of starvation amid food and water. The current theme of Indispire, Love vs Freedom - what would you choose? ( If you land in a situation where you can get true love but not freedom of expression)   #freedom , reminded me of Buridan’s Ass.  Let’s take the example of Kashmir.  Indian patriots are supposedly in love with that piece of land.  Their love denies freedom to the people of the land to choose their own destiny.  Hence the civil war kind of situation in...

One of O V Vijayan’s characters narrates a parable to show how we may not be able to alter our destiny, not much at least. A bullock, one of a pair used for drawing a cart, prayed, “Oh God, why did you give me this destiny?  You have not only made me a cart-bullock but also fixed my place on the right side of the cart.  The driver uses his whip relentlessly and it is on my back it falls all the time.  If you can’t alter my destiny of being a cart-bullock, at least change my place from the right to the left side.” God decided to grant the wish.  The bullocks and the cart were sold on the same day.  The new owner placed the bullock on the left side.  And the new driver was left-handed. Well, I really don’t think that our destiny is entirely out of our control.  Some things are beyond our control, but some are certainly within control.  For example, Mark Antony’s meeting with Cleopatra might have been beyond his control, but choosin...

Some gates remain open, and some shut. That's their choice. Which one to choose? That's our choice