Tomichan Matheikal's blog

This was the village road until two years ago Sunday is the best day in the village not because it is a holiday for me as for others too but because the village road becomes desolate. It doesn’t look like a village at all on weekdays because of the heavy traffic on the road. Sunday is a holiday for the road too, mercifully. I have walked on this road for years and years during my childhood. There were hardly any vehicles those days except a rare, rickety bus and a few bicycles. People walked kilometres in those days, most of them barefoot, with the sky above their head and small dreams at the feet. Hardly anyone walks these days and the dreams have gone abroad.   The village river has not changed much except for increased pollution When I decided to leave Delhi and opted for a rural life, many well-wishers advised me against it. “You won’t survive there more than a year,” one told me with the certainly of a prophet. “You give me a year!” I retorted. “I give m...

Happiness is a choice. Wandering on the rugged landscapes of Kerala’s folklore is a character popularly known as Naranath Bhranthan. Bhranthan in Malayalam means ‘lunatic’. Naranath Bhranthan was not really as mad as he pretended to be. He was an enlightened person. He understood the absurdity of life even more clearly than Albert Camus who employed Sisyphus to illustrate the absurdity of life. Sisyphus pushes a boulder uphill knowing fully well that the vindictive gods will push it down before it reaches the zenith just to mock him. He will put his shoulder to the boulder again and again with the full knowledge of his condemned fate. Sisyphus is happy, nevertheless, in Camus’s interpretation of the myth. For Camus’s Sisyphus, happiness is a choice. His happiness is his revenge against the gods who punished him. Kerala’s Naranath Bhranthan also rolled a boulder uphill. He was not punished by anyone, however. He chose to roll the boulder uphill and then push it down. H...

Don Bosco (16 Aug 1815 - 31 Jan 1888) In Catholic parlance, which flows through my veins in spite of myself, today is the Feast of Don Bosco. My life was both made and unmade by Don Bosco institutions. Any great person can make or break people because of his followers. Religious institutions are the best examples. I’m presenting below an extract from my forthcoming book titled Autumn Shadows to celebrate the Feast of Don Bosco in my own way which is obviously very different from how it is celebrated in his institutions today. Do I feel nostalgic about the Feast? Not at all. I feel relieved. That’s why this celebration. The extract follows. Don Bosco, as Saint John Bosco was popularly known, had a remarkably good system for the education of youth.   He called it ‘preventive system’.   The educators should be ever vigilant so that wrong actions are prevented before they can be committed.   Reason, religion and loving kindness are the three pillars of that syste...

Image courtesy Scroll Any act of violence is a form of savagery; only the degree varies. The Hindu Mahasabha leader’s act of shooting at an effigy of Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation, is as much savagery as was Nathuram Godse’s attack on the real Gandhi. The woman did not stop at shooting Gandhi but went on to garland Godse, make a ritualistic offering to the killer and also distribute sweets to the onlookers. The organisers of the event also ensured that the effigy of Gandhi shed a blood-like liquid upon the shooting which added a high degree of perversion to the depraved episode.  What Godse did was to encounter one of the most peaceful ideologies (Gandhi’s version of non-violence) with the most violent response (murder). As mankind evolved we learnt to shun violence and have recourse to the legal system for resolving conflicts. Violence continued to be wielded by some people: criminals. Crime is a form of savagery, a negation of civilisation. Animals hav...

Fiction “Did you check your bumper result?” Anna asked as she dropped the chopped onion into the sizzling oil. “Not yet, not yet,” Chacko answered with visible impatience. “Where do I get time for anything once I put my hand to this?” He was kneading the dough for the parathas which the clients of the restaurant relished throughout the day. Chacko and Anna were the popular pair at the restaurant in the small town on the bank of the Periyar River. Chacko made the delicious parathas while Anna cooked the Kerala delicacies that accompanied the parathas. Both Chacko and Anna belonged to the social class that could never dream of any annual income which the government recently fixed as the limit for job quotas for the economically backward classes. The classes in the country and their various quotas never made any sense to Chacko and Anna except that they knew they never belonged to any of these privileged classes whichever party came to power. “Ten per cent jobs reserved...