Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Fiction “Imagine a future, 10 years from now or 20 years from now, when the United States of America is still holding people who have been charged with no crime, on a piece of land that is not part of our country.  Is that who we are?  Is that something that our founders foresaw?” Saleem Syed’s ears stood up.  Could the President of America have really said that?  The TV was broadcasting Barack Obama’s speech on national security.  Saleem’s hand moved impulsively to his mobile phone.  “Can you arrange for me a visit to Guantanamo Bay?” “Tough, boy, but I can try.  What gives you the idea, however?”  It was the editor-publisher of the weekly for which Saleem had been working as a journalist for years.   In a couple of days’ time his editor-publisher got him the permission to visit Gitmo, as Guantanamo is known among people closely associated with it.  T&C applied, of course. Surrounded by the sea where the steep hills did not reach, the prison camp stoo

Anita Joshua’s article in The Hindu , ‘ A growing intolerance’ (Aug 21, 2012), shows how Pakistan has become a nation of haters.   The Pakistanis hate not only the Hindus (7 million Hindus live in that country – imagine the magnitude of the hatred!) and Christians (who are, according to the article, changing their names to “Shahbaz, Shazia, Nasreen, Tahira, and such like”), but also the Muslims of denominations other than Sunni.   Shias, says Joshua, “are pulled out of buses and summarily executed in broad daylight in various parts of the country.”   Sufi shrines are bombed. “Hatred is the coward’s revenge for being intimidated,” says Undershaft, a Shavian character ( Major Barbara ).   How can there be so many cowards in a country who feel so intimidated as to hate such large numbers of people? Joshua’s article quotes Harris Gazdar of the Karachi-based Collective for Social Science Research: “Some of these crimes might be committed by groups with religious motivation, but mos