Tomichan Matheikal's blog

One of O V Vijayan’s characters narrates a parable to show how we may not be able to alter our destiny, not much at least. A bullock, one of a pair used for drawing a cart, prayed, “Oh God, why did you give me this destiny?  You have not only made me a cart-bullock but also fixed my place on the right side of the cart.  The driver uses his whip relentlessly and it is on my back it falls all the time.  If you can’t alter my destiny of being a cart-bullock, at least change my place from the right to the left side.” God decided to grant the wish.  The bullocks and the cart were sold on the same day.  The new owner placed the bullock on the left side.  And the new driver was left-handed. Well, I really don’t think that our destiny is entirely out of our control.  Some things are beyond our control, but some are certainly within control.  For example, Mark Antony’s meeting with Cleopatra might have been beyond his control, but choosing to let Rome melt in the Tiber of his

“You live in a dream world – a haze of poetry and fuzzy ideas about revolution.  To build something is not the same thing as dreaming of it: building is always a matter of well-chosen compromises.”  (214) One of the themes of Amitav Ghosh’s novel, The Hungry Tide , is the futility of effete idealism and the inevitable need for compromises.   Nirmal Bose is the effete idealist to whom his wife, Nilima, speaks the above words.   A brief detention by the police for participating in the 1948 conference of Socialist International unsettled Nirmal so much that he could not continue his job as English lecturer in a Calcutta college anymore.  His physical condition deteriorated so much that his doctors advised a life outside the city.  The couple chose Sunderbans where Nirmal took up job as the headmaster of a school in Lusibari, one of the islands.  Nilima founded a Trust which built up a hospital for the people of the islands.  Romantic dreamers like Nirmal will never be happ

Yellowing vs Greening Winter gives way to summer in Delhi without an intervening spring.  That's, perhaps, why Nirad C Choudhuri wrote in  The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian   that life in the Indo-Gangetic plains saps vitality.  I took the following pictures this morning, vital Sunday for me, from my surroundings.  The changes in the environment in Delhi always fascinate me: they are as quick (pun intended) as the denizens of the place.  Does the environment affect people's character? Fresh vs Stale Vitality strives I count myself fortunate to be living in such surroundings.  But I also know that surroundings are not always one's choice.  They may be a gift, an evanescent gift.

Essay The earlier system of education focused on academic excellence and competition.  The results in written assessments determined the future of the students.  One obtained the career of his choice depending on the scores obtained in various exams.  The system engendered a lot of frustration among many students whose career aspirations were snuffed out by the rat race.  Quite many lives ended even before they began.  Suicides were not uncommon even in institutions of higher learning.  Educators and other guardians of the society were alarmed.  They came to the conclusion that a change in the system was called for. Coupled with the gloom of frustration and suicides was the awareness that arose in psychology that IQ (intelligence quotient) was not necessarily the measure of a person’s intelligence.  Psychologists as well as educationists came up with theories that pushed abstract intelligence out of the limelight.  Robert Sternberg (1949- )posited the triarchic theory of

Ansari, 2002 Many of us may recall the terrified face of Qutubuddin Ansari.  It was one of the most widely circulated pictures in the days that followed the Gujarat riots of 2002.  It showed terror, helplessness, and the obstinate persistence of the survival instinct.  Ansari left Gujarat and settled down in West Bengal after the riots. If Ansari was one of the preys, Ashok Mochi was one of the predators. The picture of the Bajrang Dal activist was as popular as Ansari’s in those days.  This picture showed the other face of the riots: the diabolic dimension of fanaticism.  Two days back both Ansari and Mochi shared the same platform in Kerala.  The occasion was a seminar on genocide organised in Kannur by certain cultural organisations associated with CPI(M).  Ashok Mochi, 2002 Ashok Mochi told the audience that he never voted after the nefarious role he played in the Gujarat riots.  He realised the severity of his crimes and repented what he did.  He continued

“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