Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Three men were marooned on an uninhabited island.  As they sat desperate and disheartened, unable to find a way out of the dreadful place, the spirit of the island appeared to them.  Having had no association with human beings hitherto, the spirit was untouched by malice or evil.  “Make a wish and I can grant it,” offered the spirit genially.  “Get me back to my people,” wished the first man and his wish was granted instantly.  The second man too wished the same and he too joined his people back home.  “What about you?” the spirit asked the third man.  “I’m feeling so lonely here without those two friends.  I wish they were back here.” A good friend of mine made a couple of comments on one of my recent blog posts.  In one of the comments she suggested that I should learn to personalise success when I had argued that living in a world run by crooks and sharks good people would find success too elusive a thing.  A few minutes back ...

A scene from the terrace of an apartment in Delhi Water is the foundation of life. 500,000 litre water was brought to Latur in Maharashtra yesterday by train from a distance of 350 km and each person in Latur got less than one litre. The cricket pitch and other places belonging to the privileged sections get water galore while the poor have to wait for the water trains to come with one litre of water for each person. Delhi is one place which taught me that success belongs to those who can wrench it mercilessly by hook or by crook. Now Maharashtra is teaching us a lesson about water.

In all probability, most of the richest people in the world today were not exceptional academicians at school.  Most of the powerful political leaders might not have scored very high marks at school.  Conversely, the top scorers at school need not become highly successful in life.  In short, academic brilliance particularly at school seems to have little to do with success in life if we associate success with conquering certain quanta of wealth or power (or both).  More scandalising is the possibility that many of the best scholars at school did not achieve anything much in life by way of what is normally meant by success.  I don’t know if any detailed research has been done on this recently.  I know that psychologist Lewis Terman (1877-1956) carried out a very detailed research on a large number of highly gifted students and found out that a good many of the highly gifted students did not really make it big in life.  He realised that apar...

Book Review One of the amusing truths about the human species is that in spite of the breathtaking achievements we have made, and continue to make, in various fields, our lives continue to be dominated by superficiality.  There are some manners that we have to learn and practise in order to belong to our class and the manners are, more often than not, quite silly.  Even our physical appearance matters a lot.  'Fair and lovely' is one of those silly norms.  What we boast of in the name of our culture too has a way of attaining superficiality.  For example, we can wear the typical western attire and go to deliver sermons on the ancient Indian culture to youngsters who may be celebrating the Valentine’s Day. Lata Subramanian’s debut book, A Dance with the Corporate Ton , is about the paradoxical superficiality of our species.  The very first sentence of the book will tell us what it is about: “If you wish to be successful in your chosen career, i...

Sunday musings “... if God spoke directly to your face and said, ‘I command that you be happy in the world, as long as you live.’  What would you do then?” That’s one of the questions that has remained with me ever since I read Richard Bach’s Illusions as a twenty year-old man.  It remained somewhere within me without affecting me really in any significant way.  Later on, as a teacher, I used it many times in the class for conveying certain messages effectively. Disclaimer: I don’t believe in God. But I don’t question anyone’s faith.  What I question is the exploitation of people in the name of gods and faith.  I have seen many people drawing the much needed psychological (call it spiritual, if you prefer) sustenance from their religious faith.  I’d be the last person to take away such sustenance from anyone. There are times when I felt that religious faith would be a blessing.  It can be a free panacea for certain ills that pl...

Material success and career advancement need not necessarily bring happiness.  Genuine happiness radiates from the core of one’s heart.  It implies that one should discover it at the core of one’s heart.  Possessions and achievements have little to do with real contentment.  They remain at the superficial level of existence.  They boost the ego. Pip, Charles Dickens’ protagonist in the novel Great Expectations (1861), is an example of this great lesson in happiness.  Pip is born in a poor family in the English countryside and he soon loses his parents.  His sister, married to Joe, looks after Pip.  Joe becomes Pip’s foster father.  As a young boy Pip is sent to the house of Miss Havisham to carry out certain works and he is enchanted by the beauty of Estella whom he meets there.  Miss Havisham is an eccentric woman who has c called a halt on her life because the man whom she had loved ditcher her.  She continues to wear...

"Acting wholeheartedly with wisdom means appreciating the relationships and interactions between ourselves and others," say Joseph O'Connor and John Seymour in their book on NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming).  (The above illustration is taken from that book.)  You can't really conquer peaks of success all alone simply because everything around you is linked to you.  With an invisible string.   When you think you are conquering the peak alone, with no rival beneath you because the sole rival in sight is about to fall off, remember that his fall may mean your fall too.   Why do people actually want to push others down to the bottom?   Helplessness, I think.  Inability to manage others.  Sheer inability.   Weakness makes us aggressive? But is it only weakness?  Can aggression be fun? I was watching a young boy playing a race game on computer.  Whenever he came across a rival in the game he would do ...

“But you worship money, Nate.  You’re part of a culture where everything is measured by money.  It’s a religion.” “True.  But sex is pretty important too.” “Okay, money and sex.  What else?” “Fame.  Everybody wants to be a celebrity.” “It’s a sad culture.  People live in a frenzy.  They work all the time to make money to buy things to impress other people.  They’re measured by what they own.” This is part of a conversation between two characters, Nate and Rachel, in John Grisham’s novel, The Testament (1999).  Rachel is a missionary in a remote part of a swampy land called Pantanal in Brazil.  She was the illegitimate daughter of one of the richest men in the world, an American industrialist named Troy Phelan.  But she had severed all links with her father (there was little more link than her name) after the death of her mother.  She had even changed her name so that nobody would ever link her with Phel...

The origin of the art of flattery goes back to time immemorial.  Kings used to keep flatterers in their courts and reward them with treasures for their efforts to make the kings appear greater than they were.  It seems that kings generally suffered from acute inferiority complex which had to be cured with flattery in addition to accoutrements like shiny robes and golden crown. It’s not only kings of the bygone days that craved for flattery, their later counterparts also seem to lap it up earnestly.  Most people in power seem to love flatterers.  Is it because the desire for power and  inferiority complex are two sides of the same coin?  Whatever that be, it seems that the ability to flatter those in power is a valuable life skill.  The benefits one can derive using this art skilfully may not be insignificant at all.  In fact, it is much more useful than intelligence or what is generally known as IQ. Robert Sternberg, psychologis...

‘Should Wizard Hit Mommy?’ is a short story by John Updike.   It’s prescribed by CBSE as a lesson for class 12 students.   CBSE’s interpretation of the lesson is as silly as any interpretation can get to.   The story is about a family.   Jack the father, Clare the mother, and Jo the daughter. Jo is just 4 years old.   Jack tells her the bedtime stories.   He also tells her stories on Saturday afternoons for her nap. One Saturday afternoon he tells her the story of Roger Skunk whose problem is his stench which keeps other animals away.   He is not able to make friends because of his stench. The wizard solves the problem by transforming the smell into the fragrance of roses. Jo is happy with the story and would have gone to sleep had it not been for Jack who was unhappy with the resolution of Roger Skunk’s problem.   How can a skunk smell like roses?   He won’t be a skunk.   His identity will be lost. So Jack continued the st...

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