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

Madhuri had reasons to be chagrined: her idol had deserted her.  She had deserted her family, defied her beloved father, to live with her idol, the famous novelist Amitabh Sinha.  Her devotion to the idol was such that she took all the necessary precaution to avoid getting pregnant.  Children would divert her devotion from her idol.  Five years of selfless worship.  Yet he deserted her.  What’s unbearable was that he took as his beloved the woman whom Madhuri hated the most.  Sheila the witch with her two kids one of whom was a moron.  Madhuri had first fallen in love with Amitabh’s novels.  The love grew into admiration and it spread like a contagious disease from the creation to the creator.  “Don’t trust writers and such people,” Madhuri was warned by her father.  “They can’t love anyone except themselves and their works.” Madhuri was sure that Amitabh would love her.  How can a god ignore his most ardent devotee? Such devotion brings devastation when it is s

Lot and his daughters - a painting Self-righteous fool that Iam!  Lot beat his chest and lamented.  His cries rose to the heavens, “Yahweh!  Forgive me, forgive me.”  Lot’s sin was manifold.  Lust and incest.  He copulated with both of his daughters.  His daughters’ children would not be his grandchildren as it should have been.  How disgraceful!  The mountains off Zoar echoed his laments. Lot had fled Sodom because of its immorality.  The people were like pigs wallowing in filth: they wallowed in sex and sensuality.  Bored of the women, the men of Sodom sought and found their delights in male bodies.  Left to themselves, their women too discovered their own delights: in the bodies of each other.  Bodily pleasures.  Damnation.  Death. The wombs of Sodom cried to the heavens for seeds to germinate.  The heavens heard the cries.  Yahweh opened the gate of the heavens and told Lot to move out. “You have been a temperate man,” said Yahweh to Lot.  “You did not forsa

“At the age of seventeen, working as a delivery boy at Afremow’s drugstore in Chicago was the perfect job, because it made it possible for me to steal enough sleeping pills to commit suicide.” Sidney Sheldon That’s the opening sentence of the autobiography of a man who became a best-selling popular fiction writer apart from making a name for himself in Hollywood, Sidney Sheldon. Born in 1917, Sheldon had to live his adolescence through the Great Depression.  His mother, Natalie, was born in Russia, a country which drove her family out along with many others during a pogrom against Jews.  She was a dreamer, according to Sheldon.  She dreamt of marrying a prince.  But the husband she got was Otto, “a street fighter who had dropped out of school after the sixth grade.” Poverty at home.  Great Depression in the country.  Nothing to cling on to, nothing to look forward to.  The young Sheldon managed to grab enough sleeping pills from his workplace, enough to kill him.  H

“Get lost, you common aadmi,” shouted Meena.  She knew too well that it was her boyfriend, her beloved, her fiancé, that was at the door.  A door that any beggar could knock down with one punch. “I’m sorry, Meena. Can’t you forgive me?  Please yaar.” Arvind pleaded. “Go to your Deepa.” “Please understand yaar.  Deepa is a party worker, a senior member of the Average People’s Party.  APP zindabad.” “Get lost with your APP.  You think I’m just average and you can play your male chauvinist games with me.”  She had learnt that phrase ‘male chauvinist’ from her slum mate, Sugandha. “Dee... Mee.. Meena, I love you, and I love you only.  Open the door at least yaar.  Let me explain the whole bullshit.” “Cowshit, you mean, you scoundrel!  You are running after a lot of cows these days.  If I open the door I’ll have to slap you.” “Okay, slap me, but open the door yaar.” She opened the door and gave a slight slap on her fiance’s face.  He was not prepared for