Tomichan Matheikal's blog

The basic theme of Kazantzakis’s novel, The Last Temptation of Christ , is the conflict between the body and the soul or, in the words of the novelist himself, “the struggle between God and man.” “A weak soul does not have the endurance to resist the flesh for very long,” says Kazantzakis in the Preface.  “It grows heavy, becomes flesh itself, and the contest ends.  But among responsible men… the conflict between flesh and spirit breaks out mercilessly and may last until death.” (emphasis added) Kazantzakis explored this theme with slight variations in many novels.  In The Last Temptation , Jesus overcomes the temptations of the flesh by courting death.  In Saint Francis , the eponymous protagonist overcomes his fleshly desires through rigorous mortification.  Zorba, in Zorba the Greek , subscribes to a unique version of the Buddhist middle path by blending the body and the soul in his own pragmatic way. “God and devil are one and the same thing!” Zorba declares repe

“You’re lucky to have invented a god who dances to your tunes.”   The youngest and the most beloved wife of the Prophet ridicules him thus in Salman Rushdie’s most controversial novel, Satanic Verses .  “Lies! Lies! Lies!” is the reaction of Jesus on reading Mathew’s gospel in Kazantzakis’s novel, The Last Temptation of Christ .  Matthew tries to justify the lies he has written by saying that an angel dictates what he writes.  It is divine revelation.  How can lies be divine revelation?  Toward the end of Kazantzakis’s novel Matthew tells Jesus, “How masterfully I matched your words and deeds with the prophets!  It was terribly difficult, but I managed.  I used to say to myself that in the synagogues of the future the faithful would open thick tomes bound in gold and say, ‘The lesson for today is from the holy Gospel according to Matthew!’  This thought gave me wings and I wrote.” We may never know whether that was indeed the real reason why Matthew wrote the gospel.  We m

I was indeed a serious student When I turned 50, a desire which is not typically quinquagenarian sprouted in me.  I wanted to do Masters in psychology.  Actually I had started reading up a bit of psychology so that I could deal better with my young students in a world whose adolescence was beginning to baffle me increasingly.  As soon as I read in the newspaper that IGNOU was beginning correspondence course in MA-psychology, I joined up.  I thought a university course would give shape and direction to my newfound interest. Three years after I joined the course, having completed all the written exams successfully, I remain unable and incapable of getting a certificate from the university.  IGNOU has harassed me so much with the assignments and other such out-of-the-exam-hall works that I have decided to say goodbye to the university without getting trying any further for its certificate.  After all, whatever knowledge I have acquired cannot be taken away by anyone.  And

Satan stood here yesterday, The smell of gun powder lingers still… You dared to utter those words in the UN General Assembly just a day after George W Bush had spoken donning the garb of the world’s moral police commissioner. Bush’s America, as did his predecessors’ as well as his successors’, promised prosperity to all. But you delivered it at least to the people of your country.             You had a vision                         Your life was a mission             The world stands in need of many leaders like you. You showed how a nation’s resources can be used for the welfare of all the people unlike the American vision of amassing it for a select few leaving the rest to scramble for crumbs... When cancer ate into your being you accused America of conspiring to spread cancer among the socialist leaders in Latin America. After all, Paraguay’s president Fernanado Lugo, Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff

Romanticism is good in poetry but can be fatal in real life.  “The lot of the man who sees life truly and thinks about it romantically is Despair,” says Bernard Shaw [Preface to Caesar and Cleopatra ].  Some of the finest poets in the history of English literature met their end in the prime of their life.  Will Durant argued that they were killed by their romanticism.  Shaw wouldn’t have disagreed. Today’s Hindu newspaper reports that “Sixty years after death, Stalin (is) turning hero for Russians.”  Celebrating the 60 th anniversary of Stalin’s death, “a majority of Russians” expressed the view that “the Soviet dictator had played a positive role in Soviet history.”  The report goes on to say that “The number of people who called Stalin the most outstanding historical figure jumped from 12 per cent shortly before the fall of the Soviet Union to 36 per cent in 2008.”  And now 49% of Russians view Stalin as a great hero “even though they are aware of millions of innocent peop

“The Ancient Egyptians built the pyramids when Germans were living in caves.  Arabs ruled the world in the Middle Ages – the Muslims were doing algebra when Germans princes could not write their own names…. Civilizations rise and fall…”  One of Ken Follett’s characters says that in The Winter of the World . We may like to think we are more civilised than our forefathers.  One of the many illusions under which quite many people labour is that human civilisation improves with each passing day.  The person speaking through his mobile phone with another who is sitting thousands of miles away is more civilised than the one who communicated sitting in a jungle with the help of the signals beaten on a drum.  Is he really? Historians and scholars like Prof Felipe Fernandez-Armesto will not agree.  The professor says that “Societies do not evolve: they just change” [ Civilizations ].  The change need not be for the better. Consider the following passage a while: But the B

  “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”   The realization dawned upon the Biblical God pretty early (Genesis 6: 5).   It didn’t take too many generations down from Adam and Eve for God to come to the regret that “he had made man on the earth” (6: 6).    So God decided to “blot out man whom I have created from the face of the ground, man and beast and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.”   Gods are not known for rationality, whatever their religion.   The Biblical God is as whimsical as any counterpart of his.   Having condemned the creatures as unworthy of existence and fit only to be drowned in a deluge, God decides to save Noah and his family as well as “seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and his mate; and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and his mate; and seven pairs of the birds of the air also, male a