Tomichan Matheikal's blog

The Himalayas - from Lonely Planet The other day, I was at a friend’s place when the cry of two women rose in the air. It was from a house a few doors down. When I reached there along with my friend, quite a few people had already gathered. The two women – a mother and daughter – who wailed explained the cause of their grief. They believed that one particular woman, whom they mentioned by name, was doing black magic against them because of which they were facing disasters one after another. The latest disaster was the daughter’s failure in her graduation examination. One of the men who had come hearing the wailing told the mother and daughter rather bluntly that what they needed was psychiatric help. “You believe in such balderdash as black magic [ koodotram , in Malayalam]?” He turned to the daughter and said, “You flunked because you didn’t study. Instead, you were loitering with your boyfriend.” He went away in disgust. My friend told me, as we walked back, that the mother was

One of the many messages that Richard Bach’s Illusions proffers is that once we have climbed certain peaks we won’t descend. Once we have reached certain heights, we will spread our wings and fly. Once we have reached certain standards, nothing less will satisfy us. When the knight in John Keats’s poem, La Belle Dame Sans Merci , encountered the ideal beauty, he refused to be satisfied with anything less and spent his entire life pursuing that beauty in spite of its fatal elusiveness. If you meet your god, how will that encounter alter your life? Those who touch the divine can never be satisfied with the mundane routines of existence. Stating that same truth in another way: If you are just another ordinary person on the earth, you have not touched the divine. You have not met your god. Your god is only an idol in the temple or the church or some such place. There are umpteen religions in the human world. There are countless gods. But evil keeps mounting. And pretty much of

A church in Kottayam, Kerala Frederick Douglas was a slave in in the 19 th century America. After emancipation, he wrote a book titled Narrative (1845) in which he mentions his master’s spirituality. His master experienced a religious transformation at a Methodist revival programme. Douglas naturally thought that his master would become a kind and magnanimous person after his religious transformation. What good is religion and spirituality if they don’t make you at least a person with basic human kindness? Douglas found, however, that his master became “more cruel and hateful in all his ways.” We are living in a time when a lot of atrocities are being perpetrated in the name of gods and religions. Don’t they make you wonder what good religion is, gods are, if they bring more agony and evil into our world? I gave up religion long ago precisely because of this problem. I noticed that religions bring more evil into the human affairs than anything else – with the exception of politic

Quintin Matsys, from Wikipedia There was a young man in Antwerp. And there was a young girl too. We don’t need anything more to begin a romantic story. And that’s just what happened. The man and the girl fell in love with each other. Passionately. The normal course would have been marriage and family life. But that didn’t happen. Because the man was a blacksmith and farrier by profession and the girl was the daughter of a painter. ‘I don’t want my daughter to marry a blacksmith,’ the master painter asserted. It was in the 15 th century. Feminism was not even a thought-experiment. And the boys didn’t have all the fun. Love has a unique power – the century doesn’t matter. Quintin Matsys was determined to win over the master painter and then his daughter. He sneaked into the master’s studio one day and painted a small fly on the master’s current frame. When the master returned to the studio, he tried to swat the fly only to discover that it was a painted one. The master was quick t

Pilgrims on the way Thomas, one of the disciples of Jesus, is believed to have come personally to India to propagate his master’s religion. An early 3 rd -century text titled Acts of Thomas narrates the story of Jesus sending Thomas, a carpenter by profession, to India. Thomas was supposed to help build the palace of Gondophares, founder of the Indo-Parthian kingdom and ruler from 19 to 46 CE. One of the traders from Gondophares’s kingdom brought Thomas with him to India. According to the text, King Gondophares gave a huge sum of money to Thomas for constructing the palace. Instead of constructing the palace, Thomas distributed the money among the poor people. Infuriated, the King imprisoned Thomas. Soon the King’s brother died. This brother made an apparition to the King and revealed to him that Thomas had constructed a palace for the King in heaven. Pleased with that, the King released Thomas from prison. The King and his subjects all accepted the religion of Thomas. The authent

Picture from LatinTimes ‘You’re so powerless, Pilate,’ Jesus thought as he stood in the praetorium.   The prefect of Caesar had washed his hands off his responsibility to uphold the truth.   ‘What is truth?’ he had asked. He did not wait for an answer.   Jesus was not going to answer him anyway.   He knew as well as Pilate that definitions were not what mattered to either of them.   ‘I am the truth,’ Jesus had said many times.   ‘You are the truth,’ he would have told Pilate, ‘if you wish to be.’   ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ The crowd outside the praetorium clamours louder and louder.   Being very religious, they have not entered the praetorium.   The praetorium is a pagan place and Yahweh’s chosen people should not enter pagan places on the Passover day lest they be defiled. The High Priests, Annas and Caiaphas, instigated the people by wielding their religious power.   Jesus had set the axe at the very root of their religion.   Their religion meant rubrics a

“Why have religious sentiments become touchy?” Joe, a young student, asked me.   He looked genuinely concerned.   Of late, he had started asking many such questions.   Probably he asked them at home too because his mother once complained that his English teacher was taking away his religious faith.   When I asked him about that complaint, Joe said, “You make me think.   Is thinking bad, sir?”   I winced. I told him that religion is much more than a matter of faith for most people.   It’s an identity, a political statement, a power game, and many other such things than what it should be.   Hence it becomes touchy.   “You said ‘what it should be’.   What should it be actually?   Is it really needed?” Joe asked. “The need depends on individuals.   If it didn’t serve some meaningful purpose, it wouldn’t have survived thousands of years,” I answered.   Then I went on to tell him what it should be. Religion should be a faith, an awareness and a consciousness.   Religi