Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Shahid's wedding reception Photo sent by my student When a former student of mine who is now a journalist sent me a photo of Shahid Kapoor and his wife with a lady who was my boss for a brief (and worthy of being forgotten) period of my life, what struck me was a necklace.  “That’s the religious asceticism they preached to us,” I wrote in my response to my student. I was aware of the glaring contradictions between the preaching and the practice of the religious cult to which the lady belonged.  In fact, I was one of the many victims of that barefaced disparity.  But what was Shahid Kapoor doing with her or she with him?  I googled and got the answer.  Google is a far greater miracle than any Satsang Guru! Source Shahid Kapoor is a devotee of the cult to which my former boss belonged.  In fact, his marriage was apparently arranged by the Guru .  India Today reported last month that the thespian had not yet named their child because the globe-trotting multi-bill

Yahweh by Michelangelo Recently I stumbled upon a quote from Robert G Ingersoll’s book, Some Mistakes of Moses .  The quote which puts the Jewish God on a dissection table is reproduced below: It is impossible to conceive of a more thoroughly despicable, hateful, and arrogant being, than the Jewish god. He is without a redeeming feature. In the mythology of the world he has no parallel. He, only, is never touched by agony and tears. He delights only in blood and pain. Human affections are naught to him. He cares neither for love nor music, beauty nor joy. A false friend, an unjust judge, a braggart, hypocrite, and tyrant, sincere in hatred, jealous, vain, and revengeful, false in promise, honest in curse, suspicious, ignorant, and changeable, infamous and hideous:—such is the God of the Pentateuch. There are people who believe in such a heartless, mirthless, starkly absurd God too.  It is then that I fell on the contemplation whether most gods aren’t similar one way or

Fantasy Atheist died and found himself before God.  God smiled at him more affectionately than any human being had ever done while he was on the earth. “I never imagined you existed outside human illusions and delusions.”  Atheist said with his usual candour having overcome his surprise. “On the earth,” God said slowly as if he was pondering over each word he uttered, “I don’t exist much except in human illusions and delusions.” “Oh!”  God’s reply was another surprise for Atheist. “Do you think if I actually existed on the earth as I really am there would be so much evil perpetrated in my name?” “Evil,” said Atheist. “And that too in your name.  That is exactly what me lose faith in you.” “I know. Because you had no faith in me, you were a good human being.  What if you had also started fighting in my name?” “Where am I?”  Atheist looked around. God laughed.  “In the presence of God.” “Heaven?” “Call  it what you wish.  Names matter littl

As part of the increasing give and take exchanges taking place these days between India and Pakistan, the latter has demanded that the Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-Daro be returned to it .   Dancing Girl Dancing Girl is a bronze statuette excavated from the Mohenjo-Daro site before India and Pakistan became two separate nations.  It is just 10.5 centimetres high and is about 5000 years old.  The pubescent girl is stark naked except for a whole array of bangles and a necklace.  The posture looks like that of a dancer though she might have been confidently making a statement to her audience.  She holds her chin up and looks smug.  In short, she is a total contrast to what today’s Pakistan expects of a young girl. Let us visit her briefly at the National Museum in New Delhi to ask her what she thinks of her threatened extradition. “Oh, I think it would be horrible,” says DG losing all the panache that has graced her face for millennia.  “What will they do to me there?  Wil

Though India’s own Entrepreneur Baba keeps denouncing everything foreign as unhealthy for the holy people of Bharat, Gujarat Gauseva and Gauchar Vikas Board have imported Egypt’s own Cleopatra as the model of beauty for Bharatiya nari .  According to these Gujarat gaurakshaks, 1.      Cleopatra was the most beautiful woman in the world. 2.      Cleopatra used cow’s milk for bathing. 3.      Therefore the Indian women should use cow’s dung and urine for enhancing their beauty. Don’t ask me what the logic is in that syllogism.  Where on earth have you found logic in any religious assertions and scriptural truths?  Take it on faith.  Faith is “belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel,” as defined by the Devil’s own immortal Ambrose Bierce.  Forgive me for borrowing a foreign definition; Indians are yet to acquire that sort of sense of humour – we are still steeped in bovine scatological aesthetics. Cleop

Fiction Shahina experienced a strange sense of oppression whenever she put on the hijab.  No other girl in her class had to cover her head and look like a blinkered horse.  Moreover, she was not a little girl anymore.  She was sixteen and was mature enough to make some personal choices at least.  “It is our religious duty, my girl,” Bapa told her in his usual affectionate way. “But there are other Muslim girls in the school who don’t wear such a thing.  There’s even a Muslim lady teacher who never wears it.” “Well, we live in a particular community and we have to follow the rules of that community.” How absurd, thought Shahina.  We call ourselves Muslims and then we divide ourselves into a hundred factions.  Shias, Sunnis, Salafis, and what not.  And then each faction makes rules for itself.  Then fight for the sake of those rules.  Absurd.  Absurd. Standing in front of the mirror, she looked at herself.  “Blinkered horse,” she smiled to herself in spite of th

As the world observes today as Peace Day, India and Pakistan find themselves in a belligerent situation which may soon escalate into a war.  No country can choose its neighbours and India is unfortunate to have such neighbours as Pakistan and China one of which is steeped in medieval darkness and the other has a soul that is afire with territorial greed.  Both these infelicitous neighbours will unite against India in case of a war.  Is the Third World War taking shape at the Indo-Pak borders? On the occasion  of the World Peace Day, the UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon said, “Peace is not an accident.  Peace is not a gift.  Peace is something we must all work for, every day, in every country.  Peace is not just about putting weapons aside.  It is about building societies where people share the benefits of prosperity on a healthy planet.” Peace is an attitude, in other words.  Peace is an elevated level of consciousness.  Peace comes from the heart. Can hearts guided

I am scared of religious people.  Source Come to think of it, the world has never become a better place for all the religious people it has had for centuries.  From the time Moses gave the ten commandments to Yahweh’s chosen people or Manusmriti revealed the sanatana penal code to the chosen race a little more eastward, god’s people have been trying to make man’s world better.  A few thousand years of preaching.  Thousands of gods.  Millions of laws.  Countless places of worship.  Burning candles.  Smoking incense.  Inspiring sermons from infinite pulpits. Religion comes home round the clock on satellite TV channels.  Our very breathing is regulated by religion.  Our food is becoming religious: Prakriti ka ashirwad, for example.  So much religion all around.  So many gods.  Too many gods’ own people.  But dark matter continues to dominate the universe.   Darkness explodes like bombs in the alleys where live people who are as innocent as circumcised foreskin.  Fo

There are two teachers who have left indelible marks in my psyche.  They are not my teachers in any traditional sense of the term.  They came occupying certain eminent positions in the school where I taught for well over a decade.  That school had been taken over by a new management, a religious cult, and these two ladies belonged to the cult. Together they taught me some of the greatest lessons of life which nobody else could have taught.  One of them, an elderly lady with a beatific smile on her attenuated  lips, tried to teach me English as soon as she took charge as the manager of the school.  She began editing a report I had written for the annual sports day of the school.  Every now and then she looked at me contemptuously, without losing her beatific smile, as she massacred my report and gave it quite a shape that I couldn’t ever have.  My education under her began that day and the lessons she taught me will stand me in good stead till my last breath.   She had bee

Sunday Musings BJP’s Kerala state general secretary, Surenderan, has an opinion that is quite different from that of his party about women’s entry to the Sabarimala temple.  He thinks that Lord Ayappan, the presiding deity at Sabarimala, is not a misogynist though he is a “perpetual celibate.”  But his party was quick to distance itself from the Facebook post of the state general secretary.  The state president, Kummanam Rajasekharan, dismissed the secretary’s view as “personal.” How many compromises can we make between our personal views and those of the organisation or party or system to which we belong religiously? I am an absolute hypocrite when it comes to religion.  I find it impossible to believe anything of what religions teach.  My very being rebels against the teachings much as I acknowledge the inevitable role of delusions and illusions in a normal man’s life.  In spite of the nausea they germinate in me, I participate in certain religious rituals. I partic

Love is the capacity to put yourself in the shoes of the other person.  Sex has little to do with it.  Psychological researches have shown that lust is associated with motivation / reward areas of the brain, while love activates the regions connected to caring and empathy. Source: Here Those who care for others more than for themselves as Mother Teresa did, for example, are the ideal ‘lovers’.  She cared for the persons who had no one to rely on when they needed help the most.  She cleaned the filthiest of human bodies and applied the balm of tenderness on their festering wounds and lesions.  Hers was a sincere interest in people as people.  Not as vote banks.  Not even as potential converts, as alleged by some, though her love did convert a lot of people into better human beings.  Genuine love is transformative. Genuine love changes people.  Into better human beings.  Not many are capable of such love, however.  But there are a lot of social activists who have give

I salute Mr Modi for his latest speeches.   On Saturday, he lambasted the gau rakshaks in no uncertain terms.   He called them anti-socials who are trying to masquerade their maleficence with feigned religiousness.   He has appealed to the state governments to take stern action against such criminals. Today addressing a rally in Hyderabad, he said, “If you want to attack, attack me and not Dalits. If you want to shoot, shoot me and not Dalits.”  Better late than never.  The PM should have spoken out long ago when certain sections of the country’s population or their religious places were attacked right from the time he took over the highest political authority in the country.   The PM should have spoken out when Kalburgi, Dabholkar and Pansare were murdered brutally for supporting the causes of secularism.  Not even the protests from eminent writers of the country who returned their Sahitya Akademi awards provoked the PM into taking the issue seriously.  Rohith Ve

His hobby was watching spiders chase flies. Spiders wove their webs and waited. Sooner than later some fly was sure to be trapped in the treacherously gossamer web. There’s a preordained affinity between flies and spider webs, he thought as he watched the spider rush with the glee of a conqueror to devour the trapped fly. ‘I’m like this fly,’ he muttered to himself. His religion was the spider web and its priests were the spiders. The Lords of the Ma’amad, having known of the evil opinions and acts of Baruch de Spinoza, have endeavoured by various means and promises, to turn him from his evil ways... (1632-1677) He remembered the verdict passed on him by the Ma’amad, the Council of Elders, when he was just 23 years old. His crime was that he had questioned their truths. Their truths were falsehoods for him. Their truths were illusions. Their truths were fabricated gossamer webs. He showed them the real truths. Truths, naked and unembellished, which would set them fr

Shamsudheen Fareed, a Salafi preacher in Kerala, has decided that Onam, Christmas and other such celebrations are haram.  A lot more things are haram in his version of Islam.  Movies are haram.  Even trimming the beard is! When a person convinces himself that he possesses the ultimate truths, he is destined to live in a bundle of delusions.  Simply because there are no ultimate truths.  Except in science and other rigid systems.  Even in those systems, truths are amenable to corrections.  An Einstein corrected a Newton.  Einstein’s theories are also not ultimate truths.  When it comes to human life and affairs, truths are never ultimate.  We keep learning and understanding them in our own way.  Source Joseph Conrad’s celebrated character, Kurtz ( Heart of Darkness ), is a good example of someone who deluded himself with his own ultimate truths.  He thought he possessed the ultimate truths and he wanted to civilize the native Africans by giving them those truths.  The re

A year ago, the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – The Hague (ICCT) reported that about 4000 people from the West left their homes and countries to join the Islamic State (IS).  Many of them are women.  The reporters had made a special study of the women who joined the terrorist outfit and found that it was difficult to categorise which type of women were particularly drawn to IS. “While most of the girls are young, some as young as fifteen,” says the report,  “there are also mothers with young children who make the trip. Some of the girls have difficulties in school and are said to have an IQ below average,  but there are also women who are highly educated. It also appears that even though a relatively large portion of the girls had (or still have) a troubled childhood, there are some who come from families with no known problems with the authorities. Most of the girls come from religiously moderate Muslim families,  yet some converted to Islam at a later age. While som