Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Put a few children on an island with no adults to supervise them.  Watch from a distance what they do.  In no time you will have to intervene in order to save them from themselves. William Golding wrote a novel on that theme.  Lord of the Flies , the novel by the Nobel laureate, tells the story of some children who were marooned on an island.  Soon savagery dominates their life.  The benign Ralph loses to the bullying Jack.  Evil triumphs.  There is no childhood innocence.   There is only the savagery that marks humanity essentially. Three years before Lord of the Flies was published, American literature was blessed with J D Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye (1954) which told the story of a 16 year-old boy, Holden Caulfield, whose dream was to preserve children’s innocence from the necessary corruption of adults.  Holden ends up in the loony bin.  One has to lose innocence if one is to remain sane in the human world. ...

Germaine Greer once defined the library as a place where you can lose your innocence without losing your virginity.  The implication is that knowledge or awareness deflowers your consciousness.  What Satan offered to Eve in Paradise was nothing other than the fruit of knowledge.  As a consequence of eating that fruit, Eve lost her virginity with double delight: physically as well as cognitively. According to the Bible, she along with Adam discovered shame after devouring the fruit of knowledge. Awareness leads us to the discovery of shame, loss of innocence over and again. When the real criminals enjoy positions of power or relax in paradises abroad and petty thieves or even innocent people get life terms in prisons, we discover the shame of our race yet again.  People who are worshipped as godmen or ammas are crooks at the least and hardcore criminals most often.  Lies metamorphose into truths in the new gadgets. Truth dies in infancy. Expediency is new mora...

In Amitav Ghosh’s novel, Sea of Poppies (which I reviewed yesterday ), there is a very interesting character named Paulette Lambert.  Her father is a scientist who does not believe in God and religion.  He brought up his daughter “in the innocent tranquillity of the Botanical Gardens.”  He did not allow her soul to be corrupted by religion and God.  The only altar at which she worshipped was that of Nature.  The trees were her scripture and the earth her revelation.  “She has not known anything but Love, Equality and Freedom,” her dying father tells another character from whom he seeks the favour of taking her out of the British colony.  “If she remains here, in the colonies,” he says, “most particularly in a city like this (Calcutta), where Europe hides its shame and its greed, all that awaits her is degradation: the whites of this town will tear her apart, like vultures and foxes, fighting over a corpse.  She will be an innocent thrown befo...

In George Eliot’s novel, Silas Marner , the eponymous hero is a man who felt deceived by both god and man.  His close friend deceived him by implicating him in a theft committed by the former.  Since Marner was known for his honesty and goodness, the matter was taken to God.  The lot drawn before God after the ritual of a prayer incriminated Marner again.  The worst stab in the innocent heart of Marner was when his fianceé abandoned him to marry the man who had done the terrible injustice to him. Marner leaves the place heartbroken and settles down in Raveloe as a solitary weaver who does not socialise at all.  He cannot bring himself to join any human company.  He has lost faith in mankind.  He has lost faith in God too.  However, when he sees Sally Oates suffering from the same disease which his mother had suffered from, the natural goodness in Marner well up.  He prepares a concoction for Sally and it heals her.  Marner beco...

  Ready? Go ahead, don't bother about me. I'm just an intruder with a gadget. Yeah, that's it. You are a newborn calf. You believe my words. Soon you will learn not to. [Originally posted on 19 Oct 2010.  I'm posting it again because tomorrow my students will return after their Diwali break.]