Tomichan Matheikal's blog

I asked the bird to lend me wings. I longed to fly like her. Gracefully. She tilted her head and said, “Wings won’t be of any use to you because you don’t know the sky.” And she flew away. Into the sky. For a moment, I was offended. What arrogance! Does she think she owns the sky? As I watched the bird soar effortlessly into the blue vastness, I began to see what she meant. I wanted wings, not the flight. Like wanting freedom without the responsibility that comes with it. The bird had earned her wings. Through storms, through hunger, through braving the odds. She manoeuvred her way among the missiles that flew between invisible borders erected by us humans. She witnessed the macabre dance of death that brought down cities, laid waste a whole country. Wings are about more than flights. How often have you perched on the stump of a massive tree brought down by a falling warhead and wept looking at the debris of civilisations? The language of the sky is different from tha...

“ Hindu khatare mein hai.” This was one of the first slogans that accompanied the emergence of Narendra Modi on the national scene. It means Hindus are in Danger . It reveals a deep-rooted feeling of insecurity. Hindus constitute an overwhelming majority in India – 80%. All the high positions in governance, judiciary, academics, any significant place, are occupied by Hindus. Yet the slogan was born. Strange? It will be facile to argue that Modi used this slogan and its concomitant hatred of Muslims and Christians as a political weapon for winning votes. True, he was successful in that; he rose to the highest political post in the country using minority-bashing. But the hatred did not end with that achievement; rather it spread outward and became more exclusive. Muslim and European rulers of India were booted out from the country’s history books and wherever else possible like the names of roads and institutions. With vengeance. Now there is a concerted effort going on to place In...

I was feeling utterly dispirited a few days back. On such occasions, a visit to some forest lifts my mood. So I rang up old friend M and asked whether he would like to join me on a short trip to a place called Edavetti, some 15 km from my home. “A small forest,” I said. M is also a retiree like me who loves to go places. He said yes instantly. Though the Kerala Forest Department has made an effort to convert a part of the forest into a tourist attraction of sorts, it doesn’t attract visitors at all. There was no one to walk on the narrow paths paved with tiles, apart from the two of us. We walked on until we reached the other end of the forest in a few minutes. In fact, it wasn’t a forest. It was just a copse, some 20 acres. All around it were houses belonging to private families.   Below are some pictures from the “forest.”  1. Thumba flowers (leucas aspera) which have disappeared from Kerala's regular landscapes. They were an integral part of the state's legends and...

The latest issue of Outlook is entirely dedicated to the centenary of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, RSS, an organisation that claims to be the custodian of India’s culture and morality. I would like to present here only two of the umpteen writers who are presented in the magazine. 1. Anand Kshirsagar Kshirsagar was introduced to RSS as a boy by his family with good intentions. They wanted him to be educated by a Brahmin teacher who would instil in him better Sanskar (manners). The young boy was charmed by the pride of the Hindu identity lent by the organisation, particularly because he came from a Dalit colony in Pune. The upper caste Hindus thought of people like him as “the muck of the city – unseen, unnamed, and best left forgotten.” The RSS seemed to offer him an opportunity to be not only seen but respected too.  The boy took his education seriously. “By 15, I had devoured the writings of Savarkar, Golwalkar, Hegdewar, and even Hitler’s Mein Kampf in Marathi,” Kshirsaga...

Book Review Title: Break Your Barriers: Strategic Career Essentials Author: Anu Sunil Publisher:  Amazon K indle [click to buy]   If you are looking for a concise and pragmatic guide to success in your business career, go no further. Anu Sunil’s Break Your Barriers is one of the best in the genre. This slim volume aims to teach the reader “to learn how to lead with integrity, speak clearly, and progress with confidence” (Introduction). The book is meant not just for beginners in their profession but also for seasoned achievers. The best merit of the book is that its lessons are absolutely actionable and focused, with clear procedures that may be implemented right away. The author’s claim in the introduction that “this is more than just a handbook. It’s an attitude shift” is vindicated on every page. Let us look at just one chapter randomly to understand how the book works. Chapter 3 is titled ‘Express Yourself Confidently and Consistently.’ The chapter begins wi...