Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Source: Reuters A winter morning. Sentiments burn the road awoken by the gentle sun, The cathedral spires poking the heaven behind. What have you lost that you cry for? The King was reciting the Bhagavad Gita Ensconced on the throne of Indraprastha. What belongs to you today, belonged to someone yesterday and will be someone else’s tomorrow. The beggars’ kids in tatters With bones gnawed by the fangs of winter Nagged the developed citizens in cars at the lal batti With roses, teddy bears, airplane models, All made in India with Make in India’s plastic. Whose India is it?  Wondered the journo As the King’s police arrived in vans And heckled people who claimed insecurity Not being the King’s own clans. Children bearing placards shouted slogans whose Meanings or future courses were drowned in winter haze. The present, the present is what is yours , Whether you be King on the throne, or beggar on the street, Or a citizen see...

In 1999, Thomas L Friedman argued (in his book, Lexus and the Olive Tree ) that no two countries that both had a McDonald’s had ever fought a war against each other since it got its McDonald’s.  The decade that followed disproved Friedman.  However, the point he was trying to make was valid.  He was using McDonald’s as a symbol of the middle class.  The presence of McDonald’s in a country indicated the rise of the middle class.  And the middle class is not interested in violence and war.  The middle class would rather relish a chicken burger than feel patriotism flowing through their veins when some semi-literate sadhu demands that the women give birth to ten children so that the population of a particular religion rises.    The middle class is essentially hypocritical.  Its religion is not about spirituality at all; it is about social encounters, social niceties and mutual utilisation of social connections. The middle class is intere...

Religion serves various purposes for believers.  For some, it is a source of identity.  Some seek in it community and socialisation.  Quite many use it as a political tool for gaining and wielding power over others.  Those who treat it as the ultimate source of truth are not few. What is religion, in fact?  Rather, what should it be?  This is the question that Eric Segal’s novel, Acts of Faith , seeks to probe.  Daniel and Deborah are the children of an extremely orthodox Jewish rabbi while Timothy is the illegitimate son of a woman who claims none less than the Holy Spirit as the father of her child.  Segal uses 545 pages to tell how these three characters struggle with their religions until they break themselves free of the absurd straitjackets imposed by the religion and realise the true meaning of religion. The central message of the novel may be summarised in the words of one of the characters: “You mean you hate Deborah because...

I wrote last month in a blog post that some of our (Indian) staple foods originated in alien lands.  Yesterday’s Hindu newspaper informed me that even idli, the quintessential South Indian food, probably had its origin in the Arab lands . The Right Wing ideologues in India like Mohan Bhagwat are still harping on the same old worn-out string of Hindu Rashtra though the more practical people like our beloved Prime Minister and his right hand man, Amit Shah , are choosing to keep mum on the issue at least for the time being.  Why should India be a Hindu Rashtra when the whole world is becoming a global village, countries are opening up their borders and people are moving across the borders with increasing frequency?  There are millions of Indians living in other countries, practising their religion without interference from the indigenous people of those countries.  Why should India turn parochial when the world (leaving aside a few theocratic countries ...

Words lost their souls and turned into ghosts             that haunted the pulpits and public places. The King is a great orator who conjures up             paradises of soulless words and gimmicks. Verbal ghosts are hungry for blood             that was shed in the dark alleys of bygone days. They travel on witches’ brooms between             Rama’s Treta yuga and the Mahatma’s Kali yuga, Their forked tongues spitting poison             presumed as nectar by fortune-seekers,             the sexless witches impotent to make love. They make war, They make places of worship, Where the gods are always hungry,    ...

It was a cold morning on 30 Jan 1948.  Nathuram Godse, Narayan Apte and Vishnu Karkare met together once again in Retiring Room number 6 at Old Delhi Railway Station. Godse had failed in his two earlier attempts to kill Gandhi.  He did not want to fail again.  “Third time success,” he said half jokingly to his friends. “There will be heavy police guard for Gandhi especially because of the murder attempt just ten days back,” said Godse.  Godse suggested they should buy an old camera which needed a tripod and a black hood.  He would pose as a photographer and conceal the pistol inside the base of the camera. “Nobody uses that sort of a camera nowadays,” said Apte.  He dismissed it as “a bad idea.” “Disguise yourself as a Muslim woman wearing a burqa,” suggested Karkare.  “There are many Muslim women who attend Gandhi’s prayers.  After all, he is their saviour, isn’t he?”  He spat out his hatred.   “No,” said Go...

The real question is not whether the original Preamble to the Indian Constitution contained the words ‘secularist’ and ‘socialist’ but what the present India really wants to be.  It is not a matter of words as much as about intentions and motives. A flashback from history Delhi, June 1947 Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of the British Raj, Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, and a few others are giving the final touches to the governments of independent India and Pakistan.  “You be the first Governor-General of independent India,” says Nehru to Mountbatten who is visibly dismayed. It is a gesture of gratitude and appreciation from the magnanimous people of India to a person who has been working heart and soul for the past four months keeping in mind the welfare of both the countries that are being created. Jinnah has already declared himself the Governor-General of Pakist...