Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Darkness is a pervasive theme in Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth .  The play opens with three witches one of whom says ominously, “Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” The protagonists are Macbeth and his wife Lady Macbeth both of whom are described as ‘children of darkness’ by the Shakespearean scholar A. C. Bradley.  It is worth quoting Bradley in some detail. “These two characters are fired by one and the same passion of ambition ; and to a considerable extent they are alike.  The disposition of each is high, proud, and commanding .  They are born to rule, if not to reign.  They are peremptory or contemptuous to their inferiors .  They are not children of light, like Brutus and Hamlet; they are of the world.  We observe in them no love of country, and no interest in the welfare of anyone outside their family .  Their habitual thoughts and aims are ... all of station and power.” Ambition in itself is a good thing.  But when ambition is coupled with the characteristics highl

Today (July 28) is the centenary of World War I (WWI).  The War started as a family affair and then spread to the whole world because of more family affairs.  Wars are, more often than not, family affairs even today.  We, the human beings, are still as clannish as we were when our forefathers descended from the tree and started feeling ashamed of the groins that gave birth to families.  Shame breeds wars.  Shame is the other side of honour.   What triggered WWI was the murder of the Austrian archduke Francis Ferdinand.  The year was 1914.  France was already a republic and England was a constitutional monarchy.  The rest of Europe remained conservative monarchies.  But the monarchies were already feeling the fire beneath their bottoms because of what had happened in France and England.  The common man was beginning to assert himself. It was a common man who shot the archduke Francis Ferdinand.  A common man’s crime could not have triggered a world war.  Francis Ferdin

An eagle I saw in Orcha a few months back I fly, I fly high, I fly very high, Heights are in my genes, My eyrie is on the cliff With no egg waiting to hatch. Eagle’s eggs are eaten by scavenging crows. They descend, the crows descend, And feed on the maggots that breed on the garbage Thrown by you people all over what you call civilisation – In the backyard of the plaza or the foreground of Gaza. The carrion of your civilisation nauseates me.                     I cannot lay eggs anymore. My bones shrink at the sight of your city. I’ll be the missing link between man and humanity. I’ll die in my eyrie one day Without any egg to hatch, Without offspring, Without grief. My unlaid egg is waiting for the Darwinian mutation in my eyrie where scavenging crows strive to ascend.