Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Standing between yesterday’s history and tomorrow’s mystery, he clung to the wings of a dream with a hope born anew. Hope was the last item in Pandora’s box. Hope is the well that the desert hides somewhere within it. But he saw his companions falling on the way, falling dead. They had hope, they had dreams, that they would be free next Christmas. When Christmas passed, they postponed their dream to next Easter. Easter too came and went. Too many broken promises of hopes and dreams break the wings. Break the heart. Face the reality, he said to himself. We are in hell, that’s the truth. How to beat the heat, find the ways. That’s the real hope. Hope is not a longing. Hope is not a dream. Hope is the toil that breaks the shackle bit by bit. The last item in Pandora’s box. Note : The poem was inspired by the Stockdale Paradox.  Admiral Jim Stockdale was a United States military officer held captive for eight years during the Vi...

The ability to view each day as our favourite day would be one of the best possessions we can have.  Looking at the crack of day with renewed zest as well as gratitude, breathing in the smell of freshly mowed grass on the campus, and watching the new buds on the roses are a few of the blessings I begin my days with.  There are many gifts that life brings every day helping me surmount the cynicism tickled up by various reports in the newspapers and the television channels.  Life is magnanimous enough to bring occasional, unusual surprises too.  A meeting I happened to attend just a fortnight back was one such experience.  I wrote a blog about it to celebrate the joy it added to my life.  The city of Delhi which invariably comes across in the news reports as a place of ruthless selfishness and heartless rat race revealed a new face to me that day.  I witnessed the city’s altruism, the readiness to render help to the needy and the oppressed irres...

“At the age of seventeen, working as a delivery boy at Afremow’s drugstore in Chicago was the perfect job, because it made it possible for me to steal enough sleeping pills to commit suicide.” Sidney Sheldon That’s the opening sentence of the autobiography of a man who became a best-selling popular fiction writer apart from making a name for himself in Hollywood, Sidney Sheldon. Born in 1917, Sheldon had to live his adolescence through the Great Depression.  His mother, Natalie, was born in Russia, a country which drove her family out along with many others during a pogrom against Jews.  She was a dreamer, according to Sheldon.  She dreamt of marrying a prince.  But the husband she got was Otto, “a street fighter who had dropped out of school after the sixth grade.” Poverty at home.  Great Depression in the country.  Nothing to cling on to, nothing to look forward to.  The young Sheldon managed to grab enough sleeping pills from his...