Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Had it not been for a couple of messages I received, I would not have known that today was Friendship Day.  One of the messages said, “Happy friendship day to the most fantastic friend.  Thanx for being my frd sir...”  It came from a past student.  I found it both amusing and encouraging.  Amusing, because the sender of that message is 36 years younger than me.  Encouraging, because I believe the best teacher is a friend to his/her students especially if the students are adolescents.  Teaching adolescents is fun.  Because they teach me more than I teach them.  Also because I think I’m an adolescent at heart.  In fact, a few months back one of my present students remarked that in the class.  And I laughed nodding in agreement. Adolescents are excellent friends.  In fact, their loyalty in friendship has no parallel in any other period of human growth and development.  Every parent who is struggling to deal with an adolescent son or daughter can take this counsel: be a good

It was midnight.   27 Nov 1917. Khalil al-Sakakini had put aside the book he was reading and was getting ready to go to bed when a knock on the door of his home in the Katamon area of Jerusalem jolted him, gentle though the knock was.  “Alter Levin!” gasped Khalil on seeing his midnight visitor.  Levin was known to Khalil as an American citizen, an insurance agent, and also a poet of some repute.  Worse, Levin was a Jew.  “Give me refuge,” pleaded Levin.  As an American citizen, he had been ordered to surrender himself to the Ottoman authorities.  The War was going on.  Khalil could hear the rumble of artillery around Jerusalem rolling like reverberating thunder.  The British troops were closing in.  Any foreigner who failed to surrender to the authorities would be considered a spy, as would anyone sheltering one. Here was a Jew seeking refuge at the door of a Muslim. Khalil was not a bigot. Rather, he was a scholar, an educator and a writer.  “I

Source: here “... I felt a deep joy.  This, I thought, is how great visionaries and poets see everything – as if for the first time.  Each morning they see a new world before their eyes, they do not really see it, they create it.” The quote is from one of my favourite books, Zorba the Greek , by Nikos Kazantzakis.  To be able to wake up each morning and look at the world as if I were seeing it for the first time, with the wonder of a child taken to a new place, is the blessing I’m now looking forward to. Each day used to be a delight.  Each morning used to break with promises of new experiences, new challenges and conquests, new learning...  Work was not work but sheer delight.  Certain things change and turn our world topsy-turvy.  Inevitable, I guess, particularly in times of rapid changes.  Fight, flight, or adapt – one can toy with the classical options for some time.  The decision has to be taken. I’m trying to be that child on the mountain, looking at a