Tomichan Matheikal's blog

  We are passing through one of the hardest periods in recent human history because of a pandemic. We have been thrown off our feet by a tiny virus. Our self-confidence is shaken, our medical science stands questioned, and our potential for hope is substantially eroded. We need to buttress our souls now more than ever. While medical science can help us deal with viruses and our physical ailments, we need something more than that to deal with our mental health in times like this. One of the most beautiful prayers is the Serenity Prayer written by Reinhold Niebuhr which has been adapted variously by many individuals and groups. The most common version reads thus:             God, grant me the serenity                 to accept the things I cannot change,             courage to change the things I can,   ...

Antony and Cleopatra (Dec 2020)   I was never fond of animals except as objects of spectacle in a zoo. I would prefer a considerable distance between animals and me. I didn't even want pets as they would mess up the place and I admired orderliness. My obsession with orderliness and cleanliness went to such extremes that my wife was convinced that I suffered from OCD [Obsessive Compulsive Disorder]. Three little kittens run around in my house now as if the house belongs to them. Do I love them? How did this happen? Cats entered my life accidentally. My house is on the roadside in a village. People who find it hard to look after new litters abandon them on roadsides. (Cats seem to have been blessed particularly with a fecundity to multiply like the stars in the sky or the sand on the seashore.) These abandoned little creatures cry for a while helplessly, then look around, and finally walk into the nearest house and inherit it. Cleopatra was the latest inheritor of our house. Cl...

  Alexis Zorba is the 65-year-old protagonist of Nikos Kazantzakis’s celebrated novel, Zorba the Greek . Zorba is the happiest person in the entire world of that novel. Age does not wither him and routine does not stale his infinite charm. What is the secret of his happiness? Zorba lives in the present. He belongs to the here and now. The young narrator of the novel, who is an intellectual trying to discover the meaning of life using books and contemplation, feels as he listens to Zorba that the world is recovering its pristine freshness. “All the dulled daily things regained the brightness they had in the beginning,” the narrator says. Each day is a new day for Zorba, a new opportunity to start life afresh. Every morning the earth looks new to him. He sees everything as if for the first time. He does not really see it, he creates it. In the words of the narrator, “The universe for Zorba, as for the first men on earth, was a weighty, intense vision; the stars glided over him, t...

  Are animals as stupid as human beings? Will they indulge in trading if trained? Will a dog exchange a bone with another dog for some favour like sex? Keith Chen, a professor of behavioural economics, wanted to know. So he conducted an experiment which came to be known as the Yale-New Haven Hospital’s monkey experiment. He was shocked by the results. And the hospital had to ask him to leave the monkeys alone. Chen conducted his research on a group of monkeys. His choice was the capuchin, which is a cute, little, brown monkey with a small brain that is highly focused on food and sex. (Not very unlike many human beings, you are tempted to think.) Chen, along with Venkat Lakshminarayanan, worked with seven capuchins at a lab set up by psychologist Laurie Santos at Yale-New Haven Hospital. The monkeys lived together in a large cage. At one end of the cage was a smaller cage which was the testing chamber, where one monkey at a time would enter to take part in experiments. First...

  If cattle and lions could paint, they would depict gods in their own images. And worship them too, of course. Xenophanes, the Greek philosopher, said that long, long ago. We create our gods in our own images. Xenophanes was disturbed by the behaviour of many of the gods in his religion. These gods had too many conspicuous weaknesses and vices. They were lascivious, jealous, scheming and cruel. They behaved just like the men who created them. Just like the mediocre Greek men and women. Xenophanes, being a wide traveller, was aware of other cultures and their gods. In contrast with those gods, Xenophanes thought that his own gods were silly and childish. And very Greek to boot. Soon he observed that all the gods he knew were very similar to their creators. The gods of the Ethiopians were black and flat-nosed. The Thracian gods had blue eyes and red hair. Xenophanes longed to replace the entire Greek pantheon with one God. He imagined a God without human shape and gender. Why wo...