Tomichan Matheikal's blog

“What is middle class morality?  Just an excuse for not giving me anything,” says Alfred Doolittle, a character in Bernard Shaw’s play, Pygmalion [which became the celebrated movie, My Fair Lady .]  Doolittle thinks that the middle class deprives people like him of many things like good food or some pleasures of life.  So Doolittle is an outlier.  An outlier, according to the dictionary, is “a person or thing situated away or detached from the main body or system.” Professor Higgins in the same play is also an outlier.  If Doolittle is below the middle class in hierarchy, Higgins is above it.  Doolittle needs the middle class for his financial needs. He needs the job provided by the middle class even if it means carrying the trash of that class.  He is only happy to receive charities from the middle class organisations.  Higgins does not care for the middle class any more than he would care for people like Doolittle.  In fact, Higgins wouldn’t care for the King or the Queen hi

In Andrew Marvell’s (1621-1678) poem, ‘ To his coy mistress ,’ the speaker makes an outlandish appeal to a beautiful young woman.  ‘Let’s have sex before we die because life is very short,’ is what he says bluntly.  If life were not so short, he would have spent a hundred years admiring her beautiful eyes and another “Two hundred to adore each Breast.”  He holds her at metaphorical gunpoint reminding her that though “the grave’s a fine and private place” nobody can make love there.  Sex seems to have been quite an entertainment for human beings throughout history.  No wonder, our species grew in geometrical progression and put most other species in need of our compassionate protection.  Moreover, we have come to a time when contraceptive contraptions outsell political strategies. Saint Augustine [whom I happened to quote in my last post], Immanuel Kant [philosopher] and sometimes Sigmund Freud [psychologist] thought that the sexual impulse was below the dignity of

People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and they pass themselves by without wondering. I came across these lines written by St Augustine in a book on neuro-linguistic programming.  Living in a world in which I witness the belittling of people through ingenious ways for varied motives by people occupying positions of immense responsibility, I’m left wondering when we will discover the wonder that every individual is.