Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Dear God, I lost faith in you long ago.  You did nothing to reinstate my faith.  You don’t care either way, I guess.  When millions of innocent people have been killed brutally in your name (which may be spelt differently by different people) and you never seemed to bother a bit, why should the loss of faith by someone as insignificant as me bother you? Nevertheless, I’m curious.  Do you really care about anything at all?  I can put aside the earthquakes and tsunamis and other natural calamities in the name of natural laws which you might not like to fiddle with.  I prefer to see you as a law-abiding entity.  Then will arise a question: are you the creator of the cosmos or are you just a part of it? If you are the creator, couldn’t you have done a little better work?  Couldn’t you create creatures capable of a little less evil and a little more goodness?  Why was evil necessary at all?  Or is goodness impossible without evi...

The first time Delhi gave its mandate, though a cautious one, to Mr Arvind Kejriwal, he let down the people by abandoning his responsibility.  Delhi not only forgave him but also extended the mandate with a shocking majority.  Once again, his party seems to be letting down the people. The bickering going on within the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is not at all entertaining for the people of Delhi.  Delhiites had huge expectations from the Party as proved by the votes given to it.  Even before the honeymoon is over the partners have started bloating their egos.  What has happened already is a terrible let-down for Delhiites as well as for many other people who had hoped for a better alternative in the party.  The situation in Indian politics vis-a-vis leadership is rather pathetic.  Mr Narendra Modi has good leadership skills but is too parochial in thinking to be the leader of a country like India which has more diversity than his imagination can ...

The ability to view each day as our favourite day would be one of the best possessions we can have.  Looking at the crack of day with renewed zest as well as gratitude, breathing in the smell of freshly mowed grass on the campus, and watching the new buds on the roses are a few of the blessings I begin my days with.  There are many gifts that life brings every day helping me surmount the cynicism tickled up by various reports in the newspapers and the television channels.  Life is magnanimous enough to bring occasional, unusual surprises too.  A meeting I happened to attend just a fortnight back was one such experience.  I wrote a blog about it to celebrate the joy it added to my life.  The city of Delhi which invariably comes across in the news reports as a place of ruthless selfishness and heartless rat race revealed a new face to me that day.  I witnessed the city’s altruism, the readiness to render help to the needy and the oppressed irres...

The Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) is being saffronised.  Two office bearers of RSS-backed Akhil Bharatiya Itihas Sankalan Yojana (ABISY) and a former professor who unsuccessfully contested Lok Sabha elections in Manipur last year on a BJP ticket find place in the reconstituted team of ICHR.  Maharashtra has become the ninth state in India to ban cow slaughter.  We can expect more additions to the list soon.  The past as well as the future of the country is being altered.  History is written by the victor, as they say.  The destiny is also written by the victor. The Deccan Chronicle says that the lives of about 20 lakh people will be adversely affected by the ban on beef in Maharashtra.  One assumes that is the ultimate purpose of the ban.  Hitler overtly killed his perceived enemies.  His counterparts in India do it without attracting the attention of other countries whose cooperation is required if the regime...

Dhaka killed Avijit Roy because he encouraged people to think for themselves, think freely and rationally.  Saudi Arabia is threatening to kill Raif Badawi , another blogger who, like Avijit Roy, used his rational faculty to analyse and understand his religion as well as his life. Roy and Badawi are just two examples of people who are martyred for being rational and sane.  For the crime of thinking freely and honestly. Badawi was originally sentenced to a decade in prison and 1000 lashes on the charge that he insulted Islam.  Now the charge has been modified as “renouncing Islam” the punishment for which is execution.  Why can’t a person question his religion?  Why can’t he give up his religion if he finds it unsuitable for him?  The most terrible irony is that we live in a world driven by science and technology but our sentiments are still mortgaged to antique belief systems.  Why do people find it difficult to break themselves fr...