Tomichan Matheikal's blog

“Society is necessary, yet inevitably corrupting.”  This is a theme that appears repeatedly in Joseph Conrad’s novels, according literary critic David Daiches.  One of the worst things that can happen to us is to be destined to live in a society that blatantly refuses to recognise our achievements.  It becomes worse still when there is a concerted attempt to belittle us for reasons like jealousy.  The plain truth is that we all seek to be loved by the world whether we admit it or not.  We need the attention of other people though it may not be in the form of love.  The human ego is a “leaky balloon, forever requiring helium of external love to remain inflated, and ever vulnerable to the smallest pinpricks of neglect,” as Alain de Bottom said in his book Status Anxiety . Society is the place where we get that indispensable helium from.  When we buy a car that’s better than the neighbour’s or send our child to a better school, we are in fact...

One of Osho Rajneesh’s witty tales is about a man who runs into his old friend after a gap of some twenty years.  The man (let’s call him Ram) took his friend (let’s call  him Shyam) home and gave him the best clothes he had.  Then both the friends decided to take a stroll in the village. Interesting body languages Everyone on the way enquired about Shyam.  Ram realised that all the people took note of Shyam’s clothes.  In fact, Shyam looked charming in those clothes.  Beautiful women eyed him wistfully, or so thought Ram.  They visited the houses of some important personalities in the village.  “This is my friend, Shyam, whom I’ve met after some twenty years,” Ram introduced his friend.  Then he said, “he’s a very successful and charming person.  But the clothes he’s wearing, they’re mine.” Shyam flinched slightly but ignored it. A similar introduction was given in the next house too.  When they came out of ...