Tomichan Matheikal's blog

“The question is how qualitative you want your life to be,” said Satan.  “True,” replied Eve.  “In fact, this life is quite boring.” “This is not the only life that’s open before you.  What you’re now doing is to live like animals.  You and Adam are just like the elephants or the goats or the fish or the birds.  You wake up in the morning, search for food, eat, rest, mate in the season and go to sleep.” “What else is there to do?” wondered Eve. “That’s precisely what I’m going to teach you,” Satan beamed with a kind of glee that could exist only in the hell.  “Imagine that you combine this animal life with the consciousness of the spirits.” Satan paused.  Eve had begun to imagine.  But her imagination got stuck on the word ‘consciousness.’ “Mind, thinking, awareness...” Satan tried to explain.  Eve stared at him blinking in ignorance. “See, the life of a pure spirit is boring too; more boring than that of the animals’.  The animals can at least eat and m

I’m coming to you, Catherine, dear, Together we shall ravage this moor With the fire of our passions. We shall share these heights with none Other than the creatures of the night Whose grit and cheek match ours. How long and terrible a vigil did You demand from this your mate! And wait did I, like a lump of coal In the womb of the earth, for a birth. This death is my birth: To our dark nights, our paradise. Our paradise! Where fire shall purge fire Into the brightest flame That tempers coal into diamond. Then shall be my rebirth, and yours, And of the night. Note :  Heathcliff is the protagonist of Emile Bronte’s novel, Wuthering Heights .

When the orator sees a mike Words rush out like a torrent. He’s a good juggler of words. Juggled words are like                 water drops falling in sunlight; They have hues indeterminate                 and they dazzle. I have learnt                 that words can create reality.

Fiction Draupadi’s question struck his heart like a poisoned arrow.  “Do you really believe that you are a selfless person?” Bhishma, the Patriarch of two kingdoms, the most venerated of all the Kauravas and the Pandavas, stood speechless before a woman’s question.  Women played more role in his life than he would have ever wished.  In spite of his renowned vow that he would never let a woman enter into his life, women forced their way into his life. It all started with a woman.  She was the daughter of a fisherman-chieftain.  Rather, adopted daughter.  In reality, she belonged to the celestial realms.  She had the gracefulness of a mermaid and the fragrance of musk.  No wonder Bhishma’s father fell madly in love with her.  It was that mad love which made a terrible demand on Bhishma.  He vowed that he would never marry, that he would never have any offspring.  A great sacrifice.  A noble sacrifice that made his reputation as the selfless patriarch of the kingdom. That sa

Vishal Bhardwaj has given us a monumental movie.  Haider keeps the audience glued to their seats from the beginning to the end.  Though the story is adapted from Shakespeare’s Hamlet , it takes on a fresh life of its own drawing its vitality from the complex situation that existed in Kashmir in the 1990s when militancy snowballed rending the whole social fabric of the state.  The Pandits were forced to flee in large numbers.  The Indian armed forces became a ubiquitous phantom amidst the dark shadows that hovered over the earthly paradise. In the movie, however, the armed forces appear briefly only. Shahid Kapoor mesmerises us with his enactment of the young idealistic poet’s dilemma as he is torn between his romantic idealism and the horrible reality that unfolds before his very eyes.  Terrorism and the evils it spawns are sidelined by the betrayal of the young poet’s dreams about love and relationships.  Is his mother guilty of marital infidelity?  Is his paternal uncle a

Fiction His heart seethed with envy as he returned to his palace from the Pandava capital.  In spite of all that he had done to eliminate his cousins, they had become more successful and powerful than him.  “I can feel your heartbeat,” Uncle Shakuni told Duryodhana as they were returning from Indraprastha having attended the rajasuya ceremony meant to proclaim the sovereignty of Yudhishtira.  The envy that wiggled its way like a worm into Duryodhana’s heart during the ceremony had made him so blind that he could not even distinguish between land and water.  He fell into the lake beside the Pandava Palace.  His cousins laughed at him as he was struggling to swim with all the royal robes on.   Shakuni had helped his insulted and irate nephew come out of the lake without stripping himself of all dignity.  “If the step falters, even the elephant will fall,” Shakuni admonished the merry Pandavas.  The elephant was the royal animal of the Kauravas of Hastinapura, city of the e

Mahatma Gandhi was a radical thinker with an idealistic vision.  He strove utmost to put that vision into practice in his life.  He was no less than the Buddha or Jesus in his aspirations as well as materialisation of those aspirations.  Jesus was crucified by the religious people whose vested interests were at stake.  Gandhi was shot dead by a person who represented vested religious interests. Gandhi was a Hindu in the sense he followed the religious practices of Hinduism.  But his religion surpassed the straitjackets of any organised religion.  He internalised religion to the highest degree possible for an ordinary human being.  He interpreted the  Gita  in his own unique way just as he did with the other scriptures. According to Gandhi’s interpretation, the  Mahabharata  is not the history of an actual war.  “It [the  Mahabharata ] is not a history of war between two families,” wrote Gandhi, “but the history of man – the history of the spiritual struggle of man.”[1]  The Panda