Tomichan Matheikal's blog

I’m quite convinced that I am a Romantic.   The last of the Romantic poets (William Wordsworth) died in 1850.   He was the first of them, in fact.   Yet I call him the last simply because he lived longer than the others. Most of the Romantic poets died young.   P B Shelley lived 30 years.   John Keats died at the age of 26.   Byron managed to make it to 36.   I often wondered why they died so young.   One of the books of Will Durant told me a few years ago that the Romantics died young because they dreamed too big. Durant was not a literary critic.   Literary critics are not supposed to look at the biographies of writers; they are only supposed to analyse the written discourses.   Durant was a philosopher and so he was free to look at the biography (just as he would have been free to look at anything else).   He thought that the Romantics died young because the world they dreamt of could never be materialised. The Romantics tried to run away from the society, from the city, f

The recent disaster in Sivakasi is not an exception.   Not a single year passes without similar disasters in the cracker-village called Sivakasi in Tamil Nadu.   Right now there are about 3000 living martyrs in and around Sivakasi who inherited burn injuries from the disasters and were rendered impotent for living normal life.   The hundreds who sacrificed their lives to the industry and the delight it gives to Diwali-celebrating Indians as well as the profit-reaping industrialists are always forgotten history. The crackers industry makes an annual turnover of about Rs800-1000 crore.   But the worker in the industry gets a daily wage of Rs100 to Rs200.   The industry employs about 40,000 workers directly and 100,000 indirectly (ancillary jobs that cater to the needs of the labourers).    Two questions arise. 1.       Is the industry required at all? 2.       How to find alternative employment for the workers who depend on the industry? The second question is not likely to

Isaac Asimov was a celebrated science fiction writer.   His IQ was 160, according to a test whose average score is 100.   Once a mechanic demonstrated to Asimov how a dumb person would ask for nails from a hardware shop.   Then the mechanic asked Asimov to demonstrate how a blind person would ask for a pair of scissors.   Asimov made the gestures of cutting with a pair of scissors.   The mechanic laughed and said, “The blind man would ask for it; who told you he’s dumb?”   [Courtesy: B S Warrier’s note in today’s Malayala Manorama ] It seems that the mechanic went on to tell Asimov that he was sure that the latter would fail in this test.   “Why?” asked Asimov surprised.   “You are too learned,” said the mechanic, “so you aren’t likely to be smart .” The trouble with the learned people is that their knowledge tends to act like the horse’s blinkers: they tend to think in a particular pattern.   The parable above may not be the best example for that.   This parable shows how our