Tomichan Matheikal's blog

When I was reading an article in Malayalam by Rekha K [ Bhashaposhini annual edition 2023], the question that lingered in my mind from beginning to the end of my reading was: How many people born in our world were actually wanted as children by their parents ? Rekha says that her birth was an unwanted accident. She was conceived when her mother was 42 and father 59. Her parents had six children already and they were studying in colleges or high schools. Rekha was not expected. Rekha just happened. A freak birth. Her siblings were not quite chuffed with the new arrival. They were teased by friends with questions like whether their parents had no idea about birth control methods. The aged parents too thought it was quite preposterous to have yet another baby at their age and so they decided to abort the foetus. But the abortion went awry! Some are fated to be born no matter what others do! The writer goes on to say that her parents gave her a bombastic name anyway. Maybe to make a...

When a society changes in any important respect, dislocation of character takes place, said psychologist Eric Fromm.  For example, when the feudalist system was replaced with the capitalist system many people found themselves like fish out of water until they adapted themselves to the new system.  We live in a time of rapid changes.  Each day comes with a new technology, a new software for the laptop, or a new app to be added to the smart phone.  Our world is not what it was twenty years ago.  Post offices have become redundant.  The video player metamorphosed into CD player which soon became defunct.  The CD/DVD drive replaced the floppy drive, only to be overtaken by the pen drive even before we could absorb all these changes.  Door Darshan became a romantic nostalgia struggling to breathe amid a plethora of channels of all types.  Banks went to ATMs before coming home on our laptop screens.  Queues for paying all kinds of b...