Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Is India joining the ranks of North Korea, China, and Russia when it comes to the freedom of the media? India’s rank in the World Press Freedom Index as well as many other similar indices has been declining rapidly in the recent years. The cover story of the December issue of The Caravan magazine, one of the few remaining independent journals in the country, is about how Mukesh Ambani has become the media manager of Narendra Modi. Ambani’s Reliance bought News 18 in July 2014. The year is significant. Modi had just come to power in Delhi. Eventually News 18 bought off many TV channels and journals. The Caravan informs us that using these media Modi is doing exactly what Kim Jong Un has been doing in North Korea, Putin in Russia, and Xi Jinping in China. The first major casualty, when the government takes control of the mass media, is Suppression of free speech and dissent . The Caravan reveals how scores of journalists who refused to propagate what the government wanted the...

Illustration by Copilot Designer Personally, I’m not much concerned about whether the gods are real simply because, for me, they aren’t. I can accept the mysterious nature of the cosmos, the realms that science hasn’t fathomed yet and may never, and the awe that some of it inspires in a lot of people including me. But I won’t ever find myself imagining a god that looks like a man or woman, as is the case with most of our divine entities. What will a god do with a gender, in the first place? Forget the cumbersome physical masses of their bodies which will have to obey Newton’s laws of motion in the ethereal spaces. That is why I was amused when Facebook decided to enlighten me with a booklet titled Is the Bible True ? You can download it free of charge from the site Life, Hope & Truth . It being a Sunday when life is a lot relaxed for me, I decided to explore the material which Facebook seemed to thrust into the core of my being after censoring two of my recent posts for “going...

When fellow blogger Sakshi Varma invited me join a blog-hop on the theme of disability, in connection with the International Day of Persons with Disabilities [IDPD, 3 Dec], the first person who came to my mind was Christopher Boone. Before I come to Christopher, let me tell you about Augustin (not his real name), who was my classmate in high school. Augustin’s right leg had been rendered limp due to polio in childhood. But his greatest passion was football. During the games period, he would be there on the football ground, running around as much as he could, in passionate exuberance, shouting to others what they should do, though he hardly got an opportunity to touch the ball. Whenever there was a football match, Augustin would be there on the side of the ground, holding on to the branch of a tree firmly, watching the game, with his limp leg flying in the air as if he was kicking the ball. He was engrossed totally in the game. I loved watching him rather than the game. His passion...

Liza : You are sheer humbug, Professor Higgins. You think you’re great because you have a lot of knowledge. And because you belong to the wealthy class. But I know what you are. Sheer Humbug. And I also know how to deal with you. Dear Reader, I’m writing this post for a blog hop on Rewriting the ending of a book . The character who speaks the above dialogue belongs to George Bernard Shaw’s classic play Pygmalion which Hollywood converted into an eminently successful movie, My Fair Lady . The movie did give a different ending to the play doing some injustice to Shaw. Shaw was not alive when Hollywood made the movie. He wouldn’t have liked the movie’s alternative ending simply because he was against sentimental romance. Even love was a philosophy for Shaw. He would have condemned the movie quoting Walter Savage Landor that “to those who have the greatest power of loving, love is a secondary affair.” Let me offer a different ending. For Blogchatter blog hop. Liza is ordered...

Illustration by Copilot Designer Charley wants to go back in time and live in the Galesburg of 1894. He belongs to mid-20 th century in Jack Finney’s short story, The Third Level . What triggered his longing for Galesburg of 1894 is his accidental arrival at the third level of New York Grand Central Railway station. Grand Central has only two levels. But Charley lands on a different platform which belongs to the older period. The people’s dress, the ticket counters, the gaslights, the newspaper stand, and the Currier & Ives locomotive all convince Charley that he is standing in the year of 1894. Charley’s grandfather lived in Galesburg. So Charley knows that it is a “wonderful town still, with big old frame houses, huge lawns, and tremendous trees whose branches meet overhead and roof the streets. And in 1894, summer evenings were twice as long, and people sat out on their lawn, the men smoking cigars and talking quietly, the women waving palm-leaf fans, with the fireflies all...