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

Today’s Times of India [31 Aug] reports that according to a survey conducted in 28 cities of India by a Hindi news channel Narendra Modi is the favourite choice as the country’s next Prime Minister.   We all know that surveys, like most other statistics, emulate the bikini by concealing more than what they reveal.   Nevertheless, I was left wondering why the people wanted Modi, of all people, as the PM.   I refuse to believe that these people are against the minorities in the country whom Mr Modi can eliminate by hiring some Ms Kodnani or Mr Bajrangi who will in turn hire the goons and potential criminals of the society to do the job.   I hope that these people who wish to see Mr Modi in the PM’s chair are laying their eggs in the much-vaunted development basket. Development became the catch phrase in Gujarat after the pogrom against the Muslims there orchestrated by Mr Modi in 2002 and for which he is paying a heavy price these days.   But did Mr Modi bring any real developm

This is a picture taken from one of the rear windows of my residence.  The recent showers in Delhi have given a fillip to the weeds, shrubs and trees so much so that the place which normally looks like a semi-desert has begun to look like a quasi-jungle.  And I love it just for that.  Isn't it a blessing to live in such proximity to nature? We are also blessed with a fair share of animals and birds. The campus can boast of a wide variety of birds which keep singing, cooing and whistling. Peacocks and their hens used to be regular visitors.  In the last couple of years, however, monkeys have all but displaced most of the animals.  They go around stealing pigeons' eggs and even capturing a 'sitting' pigeon. They can sit majestically like kings on the dishes of our TV connections.  They may sometimes bite into the cables and throw us off our simple 'channel' delights.  They seem to have driven out the peacocks and their hens altogether.  After all, they a

Very few Popes of the Catholic Church were saints.   Far from being saints, many of them were remarkably depraved compared to the common layperson whom their religion promised to redeem from sinfulness.   It is not easy to combine worldly power and spiritual sanctity.   Authentic spirituality is a highly personal affair though it can and does wield much power over other people.   The power that Mahatma Gandhi wielded over many of his followers was spiritual to a great extent.   The Buddha and Jesus also wielded spiritual powers.   Unlike them, Gandhi did not become a god because of the time in which he lived.   Like Jesus, however, he was martyred by his own truth. The power that Jesus, Gandhi and others like them wield is quite different from the kind wielded by, say, Hitler or Osama bin Laden.   It is the power of the truth they believed in and put into practice in their life.    The power that Hitler and Osama possessed was political and hence worldly.   The power that most

Anita Joshua’s article in The Hindu , ‘ A growing intolerance’ (Aug 21, 2012), shows how Pakistan has become a nation of haters.   The Pakistanis hate not only the Hindus (7 million Hindus live in that country – imagine the magnitude of the hatred!) and Christians (who are, according to the article, changing their names to “Shahbaz, Shazia, Nasreen, Tahira, and such like”), but also the Muslims of denominations other than Sunni.   Shias, says Joshua, “are pulled out of buses and summarily executed in broad daylight in various parts of the country.”   Sufi shrines are bombed. “Hatred is the coward’s revenge for being intimidated,” says Undershaft, a Shavian character ( Major Barbara ).   How can there be so many cowards in a country who feel so intimidated as to hate such large numbers of people? Joshua’s article quotes Harris Gazdar of the Karachi-based Collective for Social Science Research: “Some of these crimes might be committed by groups with religious motivation, but mos