Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Names matter much.  How can, for example, the road which houses the Prime Minister of Bharatvarsha be called Race Course Road?  Since the welfare of the masses is the PM’s primary concern, the road of his residence was rechristened as Lok Kalyan Marg.  Many roads in Delhi underwent such baptisms after Mr Modi became the Prime Minister of Lok Kalyan. Aurangzeb Road became APJ Abdul Kalam Road.  Dalhousie Road became Dara Shikoh Road.  Akbar is all set to lose out to Maharana Pratap.  While we can understand BJP’s hatred of the British and the Mughals, it may not be easy to understand why the Teen Murti Marg had to be given an Israeli name: Haifa Marg.   Recently Shashi Tharoor claimed that 23 of the welfare schemes implemented by the BJP were merely Congress schemes rechristened .  Examples: National Girl Child Day programmes → Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao Yojana Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan → Swachh Bharat Abhiyan Rajiv Awaas Yojan...

Once upon a time there was this godman who called himself Paramanandaswamikal.  He appeared from nowhere on a day that stood drenched in a cloudburst.  A few trees had collapsed in the storm that accompanied the cloudburst.  This man with shabby clothes and criminal looks was sitting on one of the fallen trees when the rainstorm abated.  The villagers were as suspicious initially as they were of any stranger.  “I am the poem of the almighty,” he said very solemnly when the village elder asked him who he was. The villagers thought that he was a lunatic.  Then the stranger said, “Your children are not your children.”  The villagers were amused.  They nudged each other.  Marital fidelity was not considered a particularly great virtue in that village since many men were working in faraway places and came home to embrace their wives only once in a blue moon.  “Your children are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself,” t...

Every suicide is an admission of a failure (except the euthanasia one chooses as the ultimate, inevitable option).  It becomes the failure of many persons when the death is chosen by young people.  Recently a national English newspaper reported that “ Every hour, one student commits suicide in India .”  8934 students opted for suicide in the country in 2015.  The reports says that “These deaths result from poor relationships with parents, excessive expectations, the feeling of being unwanted, poor understanding of their peer/romantic relationships. These result in an impulsive decision or a long thought-out deliberate suicide.” Life is never easy.  It has never been.  Even those who were born with a golden spoon thrust between their jaws have had to struggle much to keep the spoon from being snatched away.  “Life is one contingency after another, with no guarantees beyond the certainty of death,” as Gerald Corey puts it in a book for students of ...

In Richard Bach’s novel, Illusions, there is a question: If God appears to you and commands you to be happy, what will you do?  The novel doesn’t give any explicit answers except that happiness is your choice. The novel is about a man who is an incarnation of God.  Donald Shimoda was sent by God to be the messiah of the modern world.  But he quits the job.  He doesn’t want to drink that bitter cup.  Anyway, saving the world is just another illusion.  People don’t want salvation.  If they did, the world would have been a paradise long ago.  Isn’t every religion worth the name teaching its believers salvation?  Yet why have the believers not saved themselves?  Because they don’t want salvation.  They want miracles.  People come to Donald for miracles.  He becomes a prestidigitator and that’s not his job.  So he quits.  “It’s not my will, but yours, that matters,” God tells him.  Donald chooses to be ...

Vice President Venkaiah Naidu is incapable of distinguishing between mythology and history.   Speaking at a leadership summit at the Indian School of Business the other day, Mr Naidu said that goddesses Lakshmi and Saraswati were India’s finance and education ministers respectively. Source: OneIndia Gods and goddesses belong to myths.  Myths are important but not for teaching history.  Myths have been used by every culture to teach certain religious and moral lessons to the children.  They have also served well to help man deal with the demons in his subconscious and unconscious minds.  Joseph Campbell, arguably the best scholar on myths, said that myths provide a cultural framework for a society to educate their young.  Even as we grow older myths may help us to deal with certain problems of life.  The function of myths remain, however, at the religious level.  It is dangerous to mix myths with historical facts and events....