Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the soil, it cannot grow into a new plant.  Jesus said that, but it is a very obvious truth.  The mailbox in the picture is one which was in function until a few years back.  Now it stands like a relic in Fatehpur Beri, South Delhi.  It will gather rust and fall down one day.  Civilisation has killed it already before time will kill it once and for all.  No one will mourn its death any more than anyone will mourn the death of the cassette player or the typewriter.  The new takes the place of the old.  And the old dies.  Naturally.  Civilisation keeps moving ahead with new technology and better ways of doing things.  Life becomes easier and better. But has life really become easier and better? Is the new life better than the old? Such questions are silly because their answers are as obvious truths as what Jesus said about the grain of wheat.  Everything has merits and demerits.  Life goes on.  Changes are as inevitable a

A friend who wished to start a school of his own approached me the other day with a request: “Please draft a vision and a mission for the school.”  “The vision: Earn profit,” I said; “The mission: Earn more profit.” Being familiar with my cynicism, he said without batting an eyelid or even smiling, “Of course, you’re absolutely right...  I’m here to get a vision and a mission that’s different from the ones we usually see on websites...” I drafted something which I can’t recollect now!  [You can guess how serious I was about what I wrote.] Education today is another commercial enterprise.  Students as well as their parents want it that way too; they have been “schooled” to want it that way! In 1971, in his book, Deschooling Society, Ivan Illich blamed the education system for institutionalising values.  He argued that the schools put undue emphasis on process rather than substance .  “Once these become blurred,” wrote Illich, “a new logic is assumed: the mor

Fiction I happened to be in Kerala when the news of Cherian’s murder reached me.  Cherian was what I would call a friend of mine when I was working as a teacher in Assam.  It took some time for me to realise that he had not considered me a friend, however.  For him I was a kind of entertainment.  He loved to call me to the residential school of which he was the proprietor, director, manager and principal.  He would give me brandy to drink and food to eat.  And even a place to sleep if I wished not to go back home.  I had none waiting for me at home and hence could spend the night anywhere.  I was a gypsy of sorts who considered it the sign of an intellectual to claim a cosmopolitan nomadism for one’s identity.  Cherian thought I was a like a buffoon in a circus troupe: born to entertain, though I perceived myself a very serious thinker, a philosopher, and even an intellectual.  I put the intellectual at a higher level because the intellectual thinks he has a duty to save the worl