Tomichan Matheikal's blog

More than 700,000 people choose to commit suicide every year in the world. That is, nearly 2000 individuals end their lives every day and suicide is the leading cause of death in the age group of 15 to 29. 10 Sep is the World Suicide Prevention Day . Let me join fellow bloggers Manali and Sukaina in their endeavour to draw more people’s attention to the value of life. One of the most persuasive essays on why we should not choose death voluntarily in spite of the ordeals and absurdities of life is The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. Camus’s basic premise is that life is absurd. It has no meaning other than what you give to it. The universe is indifferent to you, if not hostile. The confrontation between the human need for clarity and the chaotic irrationality of the world can lead to existential despair. Suicide is not the answer to that despair, however. Camus looks for a philosophical answer in his essay. Not many people find consolation in philosophy. Most people seek a...

  We live in a political system that reduces us into mere numbers. In India, your Aadhar number is your identity. Whether you want to travel by train or flight, you need this number. In fact, you can do nothing without that one number which in turn is connected to a host of other numbers like your bank account, driving license and income tax payments. Even to be admitted in a hospital for treatment, you need your Aadhar. What this number implies is that the political system is not interested in you as an individual. Its sole interest is what it can extract out of you: taxes and votes. Have you ever received a birthday greeting from your government? A get-well wish when you are in hospital, let alone a query whether you need any assistance? Votes and taxes. You are valuable only for the sake of those two things. Otherwise, you are just another pawn on the board or a cog on a gear. To make sure that you remain just that – a pawn, a cog – the system bombards you with all sorts o...

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...

“Writing is a dog’s life, but the only life worth living,” said Flaubert. A meticulous writer whose novels became classics though he was, Flaubert died penniless.  Many great writers lived rather miserable lives because writing was not a very remunerative job in those days.  There were many artists too who lived in utter poverty though after their death their paintings were sold for sums which they could never have imagined in life.  Is it because they never worked for money that their works had such profundity?  Does money contaminate everything it touches? There is no money in blogging anyway.  At least, not anything significant.  Flaubert and Dostoevsky could accept the agony of pennilessness because they were in search of something much more meaningful than money.  It is their search for meaning that made their writing profound.  And that search, the search for meaning, is an endless search. Why don’t we find such deep writin...

Source One of the poems that has never ceased to fascinate me is Keats’ La Belle Dame sans Merci .  Recently the poem featured in my blog post, Secrets of the Knight .  The haggard Knight also features momentarily in the novel I’m writing.  At the age of 16, the protagonist of the novel writes an English assignment titled The Quest of Keats’ Knight , which his English teacher, Father Joseph Kunnel, finds scandalous.  While the priest was doing everything within his capacity to bring up the boy as a God-fearing Catholic, the boy seemed bent upon following in the disastrous footsteps of the romantic poet’s Knight.  Let me quote the relevant lines from the novel. The real mercilessness of la Belle Dame lies in her “titillating tantalisation,” argued the essayist. “Titillating tantalisation!”  Father Joseph was stuck on that phrase for quite a long while.  Interesting, he thought.  All human quest for the meaning of life is sure to e...

Mat wanted to die because he thought life was too frivolous an affair to deserve itself.  He had already consulted many experts on the matter before he ran into me. The doc whom he approached for medical assistance bluntly refused.  “You want me to spend the rest of my life in prison?” asked the doc furiously.   “What prevented the doc from giving me the injection was fear of the prison,” Mat explained to me.  "Not any love of life." “If the law did not prevent suicide, would you have helped me?” Mat asked the doc.  “If I try to commit suicide and fail, will the law be punishing me for failing to live or for failing to die?” The doc stared blankly into Mat’s eyes.  Then the blankness became fury.  “Get out,” he said. Then Mat went to his pastor.  “Nowhere in the Bible is it said that suicide is a sin,” explained Mat to the pastor.  And the pastor thought Mat was right.  The Old Testament’s Yahweh was very fond of ...

Fiction Her face made my heart skip a beat.  Was it really her?  I had not met Maya for over thirty years.  But the perfect symmetry of her thin but mysteriously seductive lips could not have escaped me.  I was walking up towards the Hanuman Temple on the Jakhoo Hill in Shimla when the perfect symmetry on a wrinkled face beneath a silver shock of fluttering hair hit my heart like a perverse Kamadeva’s arrow.   She was wearing a saffron robe.  A rosary of fairly huge rudraksh beads lay on her breast.  The fire in her eyes had not burned out yet though melancholy was threatening to overpower it.  She had entered a narrow trail from the main road.  “Maya,” I called. She halted but did not turn back.  I called the name again.  This time she did turn back to look at the person who had uttered a sound that she did not apparently want to hear.  I walked closer to her.  She stared at me.  I smiled....

Meditation I started this journey at some point in the pointless flow of eternity.  As purposelessly as the motion of a stone set rolling down a mountain by the insensate boot of a careless traveller. Unlike the stone, I have a lot of freedom to choose my path, the mode of my travel, the diversions and digressions.  I can choose the people I want to meet, or at least my responses to them.  I can laugh or brood.  Laughter will not necessarily generate flowers on my way.  Flowers are not necessarily more desirable than brambles. Why do I have to make this journey at all?  The May fly which has no mouth answered.  “I live just a few hours,” said the May fly which had no mouth.  “When I become an adult, I mate with another adult.  Then I die.  She lays eggs and she dies.  The eggs hatch.  More May flies are born.  Only to mate and die.”  And the May fly which had no mouth died. I learnt that the May fl...

Fiction Kundan was returning home after his monthly entertainment of a night show in the city.  It was past midnight and the heavy downpour had put out the street lamps on the village road.  But Kundan knew the road like the back of his palm and so neither the pitch darkness nor the battering rain slowed him down.  He was about to leave the road and enter the mud path through his farm when he felt the touch of cold steel on his temple.  “Keep your trap shut, else you won’t open it ever again,” said a voice which was horribly rough but perfect in pronunciation.  In the flash of a lightening Kundan saw that the burly figure that was holding a pistol against his temple.  The figure was wearing a western suit, complete with the blazer and a tie.  His suit was drenched in the rain in spite of the enormous parasol he was holding with one hand.  “I’m your boss from now on,” Kundan heard the steely voice.  “You’ll obey my orders and be ...

I introduced A C Grayling’s book, The God Argument , in two earlier posts.   This post presents the professor’s views on good life.   Grayling posits seven characteristics of a good life.   The first characteristic is that a good life is a meaningful one.   Meaning is “a set of values and their associated goals that give a life its shape and direction.”   Having children to look after or achieving success in one’s profession or any other very ordinary goal can make life meaningful.   But Grayling says quoting Oscar Wilde that everyone’s map of the world should have a Utopia on it.   That is, everyone should dream of a better world and strive to materialise that dream, if life is to be truly meaningful.   Ability to form relationships with other people is the second characteristic.   Intimacy with at least one other person is an important feature of a meaningful life.   “Good relationships make better people,” says G...

The entrance A school usually looks like a haunted place when there are no students on the campus.  It's all the more so when it comes to a residential school with a fairly big campus. My students have left for their summer vacation.  And I work in a residential school.  With a fairly large campus.  In the capital of the largest democracy in the world. Drive along I used to consider myself lucky to be working in such a school.  But can such a school continue in NCR (National Capital Region)?  As a school? Isn't the land worth much more than the returns to be gained from a school?  Even the parking lot in the city gives much more returns in terms of money!  What else matters?  So why not convert the campus into a parking lot, for example? Or a star hotel?  Or something equivalent to that for the people who matter?  If an entrepreneur is tempted by this campus, no one would be surprised. What about an ashram? ...