Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Javed Akthar in 2012 Octogenarian Javed Akthar, celebrated screenwriter and lyricist of Bollywood, was asked a question recently by a group of youngsters. Will art and literature have much relevance in the future? Akthar’s answer was an allegory. Millions of fish are caught every day by humans. They are skinned brutally, cut into pieces, cooked in infinitely varied ways, and savoured on dining tables all over the world. We, humans, raise our voice in defence of a lot of animals: cows, dogs, and wild animals too. But no one raises even a feeble cry of protest on behalf of the fish. Do you know why? Because the fish don’t cry. In fact, they do cry; but their cries have no voice. No one hears their cries. The fish are voiceless. The cry of the voiceless is literature. Art is the music of the voiceless. And so they will continue to be relevant as long as there are voiceless creatures on earth. The Jews were the voiceless fish during Hitler’s march of racial triumph – six million of the...

As part of the increasing give and take exchanges taking place these days between India and Pakistan, the latter has demanded that the Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-Daro be returned to it .   Dancing Girl Dancing Girl is a bronze statuette excavated from the Mohenjo-Daro site before India and Pakistan became two separate nations.  It is just 10.5 centimetres high and is about 5000 years old.  The pubescent girl is stark naked except for a whole array of bangles and a necklace.  The posture looks like that of a dancer though she might have been confidently making a statement to her audience.  She holds her chin up and looks smug.  In short, she is a total contrast to what today’s Pakistan expects of a young girl. Let us visit her briefly at the National Museum in New Delhi to ask her what she thinks of her threatened extradition. “Oh, I think it would be horrible,” says DG losing all the panache that has graced her face for millennia.  “W...

As the world observes today as Peace Day, India and Pakistan find themselves in a belligerent situation which may soon escalate into a war.  No country can choose its neighbours and India is unfortunate to have such neighbours as Pakistan and China one of which is steeped in medieval darkness and the other has a soul that is afire with territorial greed.  Both these infelicitous neighbours will unite against India in case of a war.  Is the Third World War taking shape at the Indo-Pak borders? On the occasion  of the World Peace Day, the UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon said, “Peace is not an accident.  Peace is not a gift.  Peace is something we must all work for, every day, in every country.  Peace is not just about putting weapons aside.  It is about building societies where people share the benefits of prosperity on a healthy planet.” Peace is an attitude, in other words.  Peace is an elevated level of consciousness.  ...

Presenting Anthony Gottlieb’s new book, The Dream of Enlightenment , The New Yorker today raises the question whether we are “ really so modern .”  Modernity is not about science and technology, argues the writer.  “Rather, it is a subjective condition, a feeling or an intuition that we are in some profound sense different from the people who lived before us.”  He goes on to show that we are no different from the people who lived, say, a hundred years ago.  We may have accumulated a lot of new technology and its gifts. But our attitudes haven’t changed.  Aristotle who was born 2400 years ago was more sophisticated in thinking than most people living today.  If Aristotle were to visit us today, he would find us as savage as the people of his days.  He wouldn’t accept our attacking certain people with missiles and bombs in the name of gods and ideologies as a sign of modernity.  He would find it impossible to imagine that certain sections o...

English philosopher, C E M Joad, defined civilisation as thinking new thoughts, making new things, and obeying the rules for the smooth functioning of the society.  Yet we don’t find such people in our history books.  Our history books are filled with people who killed others, conquered their lands, and imposed themselves on other people.  How many Indians have heard of Satyendranath Bose though there is a subatomic particle (Boson) named after him?  How many Indians are ready to recognise the name Ali Akbar Khan though he is known to the world as the Indian Johann Sebastian Bach?  Why does the genius of a Shakespeare get eclipsed by a Queen Elizabeth in history books though Shakespeare’s contribution to civilisation far outweighs that of the Queen?  These are some of the many thoughts that crossed my mind as I read the very long article by A. G. Noorani, ‘ India’s Sawdust Caesar ,’ in the latest issue of Frontline .  “A year and a half aft...

Sanskrit was originally the language of the gods the their beloved people.  Manu stipulated a terrible fate for the lower caste people who dared to listen to the Vedas or utter the shlokas.  “If the Sudra intentionally listens for committing to memory the Veda, then his ears should be filled with (molten) lead; if he utters the Veda, then his tongue should be cut off.” Now some 3000 years after those glorious days, the language is struggling to find learners.  Hence the BJP government has decided to make it compulsory in certain schools.  A language is ineluctably associated with a culture.  When the culture evolves, the language has to evolve too.  Conversely, the death of a language implies the death of a culture.  The ancient Brahminical tradition with its neat and convenient hierarchy which ensured that power remained concentrated in a few hands died as the civilisation evolved and democratic ideas overtook it. By the time India bec...

Yuval Noah Harari’s book, Sapiens: a brief history of humankind , was a best seller when it was originally published in Hebrew in Israel.  The English version is released in hardbound form.  I’m waiting for the paperback edition and will definitely get hold of one as soon as it is available.  Why?  Harari’s ideas are revolutionary, radical and tickling.  Let me focus on one of the main themes. How did man come to dominate the earth though there were many other more powerful animals on the earth?  As I gather from an article which introduced me to Harari’s book, man created stories which in turn created an immense sense of cooperation among people.  Let us understand that better.  The other animals don’t create stories.  Man creates stories about many things like gods, nations, money, human rights, etc.  These are all imaginary entities given reality to by man’s stories.  What does the thousand rupee note actually mea...

Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the soil, it cannot grow into a new plant.  Jesus said that, but it is a very obvious truth.  The mailbox in the picture is one which was in function until a few years back.  Now it stands like a relic in Fatehpur Beri, South Delhi.  It will gather rust and fall down one day.  Civilisation has killed it already before time will kill it once and for all.  No one will mourn its death any more than anyone will mourn the death of the cassette player or the typewriter.  The new takes the place of the old.  And the old dies.  Naturally.  Civilisation keeps moving ahead with new technology and better ways of doing things.  Life becomes easier and better. But has life really become easier and better? Is the new life better than the old? Such questions are silly because their answers are as obvious truths as what Jesus said about the grain of wheat.  Everything has merits an...

Book Review The Cellist of Sarajevo Author: Steven Galloway Publisher: Atlantic Books, London, 2008 Pages: 227 War is madness.  It takes human civilisation back to savagery.  It dehumanises people and makes of them cowards that hide themselves in holes like rats or ravenous beasts that ferret out the quivering rats from their holes.  It strips people of their dignity as human beings.  Food and water become scarce commodities.  Famine and diseases replace the zest for living.  Friends become foes.  Hatred spreads like a plague. Steven Galloway’s novel, The Cellist of Sarajevo , explores the theme of war through the eyes of four persons: Dragan, Kenan, Arrow and a cellist who is taken from the history of the civil war that rocked Sarajevo in the first half of the 1990s.  The disintegration of the former USSR in 1991 led to a brutal civil war that caused almost a quarter of a million deaths, the worst violence in Europe since ...

An eagle I saw in Orcha a few months back I fly, I fly high, I fly very high, Heights are in my genes, My eyrie is on the cliff With no egg waiting to hatch. Eagle’s eggs are eaten by scavenging crows. They descend, the crows descend, And feed on the maggots that breed on the garbage Thrown by you people all over what you call civilisation – In the backyard of the plaza or the foreground of Gaza. The carrion of your civilisation nauseates me.                     I cannot lay eggs anymore. My bones shrink at the sight of your city. I’ll be the missing link between man and humanity. I’ll die in my eyrie one day Without any egg to hatch, Without offspring, Without grief. My unlaid egg is waiting for the Darwinian mutation in my eyrie where scavenging crows strive to ascend.

When my problems bogged me down, I approached Guru. “No one, not even God, can solve your problems unless you want to solve them yourself,” said Guru. “But…” I was shocked.  I went to him for help because I wanted to solve my problems, didn’t I?  Why is he speaking as if I didn’t want to solve my problems? “ Most people are in love with their problems ,” Guru said as if he had read my mind.  “The drug addict, for example, loves drugs and don’t want to leave them though he may say he wants to kick the habit.  What withholds him from kicking the addiction is precisely what led him to the addiction.” “A sense of emptiness?”  I asked because I had faced that sense time and again.  “Is there anything better than emptiness in life?” asked Guru.  “Weren’t all the Mahatmas searching for emptiness?” “People can’t bear emptiness,” I blurted out. “Precisely.  That’s why they fill their life with things.  And when thin...

A scene from the movie In the 1980s movie, The Gods must be crazy , a Coke bottle dropped by the careless pilot of a helicopter upsets the lifestyle of a community of people in the Kalahari desert.  Xi, a bushman, finds the bottle falling from the sky and he takes it home.  For him as for all his people, the bottle is a miracle dropped from the heavens.  They begin to use the bottle for various purposes like grinding food, producing music, and creating artistic patterns.  Suddenly everyone wants the bottle for one purpose or another.   The bushmen had hitherto lived a very contented and happy life with the little they had.  They used to think they were blessed by the gods with whatever food and water they could get in the desert. They thought they had everything they needed.  But the bottle, descended miraculously from the heavens, becomes a bone of contention.  Everybody wants to possess it.  Jealousy and rivalry enter the comm...

“Civilization is skin-thin: scratch it and savagery bleeds out.”  [Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Civilizations ] Nobel laureate William Golding’s first novel, Lord of the Flies (1954), tells the story of a group of school boys plane-wrecked on an uninhabited island.  The leadership of the democratic and sensitive Ralph is soon usurped by the savage Jack, and childhood innocence soon gives way to uncanny cruelty on the island.  The novel is the story of evil in the human being and his society. Seeing that there are no adults to restrain them, the children are initially excited.  But Ralph emerges as a leader reminding them of their responsibility to find ways of returning home.  Ralph is a moral character in the novel.  His is a cultivated morality, the product of human civilisation.  Jack, on the other hand, is the uncultivated savage.  He soon wrenches the leadership from Ralph and becomes a dictator who imposes both his will and his...

“The Ancient Egyptians built the pyramids when Germans were living in caves.  Arabs ruled the world in the Middle Ages – the Muslims were doing algebra when Germans princes could not write their own names…. Civilizations rise and fall…”  One of Ken Follett’s characters says that in The Winter of the World . We may like to think we are more civilised than our forefathers.  One of the many illusions under which quite many people labour is that human civilisation improves with each passing day.  The person speaking through his mobile phone with another who is sitting thousands of miles away is more civilised than the one who communicated sitting in a jungle with the help of the signals beaten on a drum.  Is he really? Historians and scholars like Prof Felipe Fernandez-Armesto will not agree.  The professor says that “Societies do not evolve: they just change” [ Civilizations ].  The change need not be for the better. Consider the follow...

Many psychologists have argued that the purpose of life is self-actualisation .   In simple words, self-actualisation means becoming a more fully developed, a more complete individual.   It’s an increasing unfolding of one’s potentialities.     It’s personal growth by fulfilling one’s needs. Kurt Goldstein, professor of neurology and psychiatry, defines need as a deficit state that motivates a person to replenish the deficit.   Need is like a hole to be filled in, a hole in the psyche.   Psychologists like Abraham Maslow made a hierarchy of human needs .   At the basic level are the physiological needs.   Food, sex, and other needs of the body are very fundamental needs.   The need for security, stability, freedom from fear, need for structure, etc comes at the next level.   Maslow placed “affectionate relations with people in general” in addition to those with family and friends at the third level.   Esteem needs come next...