Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Mahatma Gandhi, whose death anniversary is commemorated today, is still relevant precisely because of the gulf between him and our contemporary leaders.  What sets Gandhi poles apart is the harmony or congruence that existed between his thought, word and deed.  He called that harmony ‘truth’.  He was a man of truth.  Since truth is not a fixed entity he experimented with it.  That is, he was constantly discovering truth.  His life was an ardent pursuit of truth.  He might have erred occasionally as any human being does however noble he or she may be.  But his pursuit was genuine.  He was genuine. The absolute lack of masks is what makes Gandhi as relevant as any genuinely spiritual leader would be at any time, even centuries after his or her death.  It is those who put on different masks to suit various occasions that need to separate religion from politics, public life from private life.  “My life is my message,” Gandhi asserted boldly because he never needed any mask at any

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 World War II.     “At four o’clock