Tomichan Matheikal's blog

“Are gods so cheap?” asked Kelu when the Ghar Vapsi thugs offered him Rs10,000.  “If you demand more you won’t get even this,” said one of the thugs flexing his muscles.  Kelu saw another one twirling his moustache. Kelu could not blame them.  It was he who informed them about his desire to convert back into Hinduism.  The only condition he posited was: “Get me and all other members of the family scheduled caste certificates.” Kelu’s ancestors belonged to a caste of “untouchable” people.  They worked for the higher caste people who possessed everything from the lands to the gods.  Kelu’s people were never allowed to earn enough money to buy even the tiniest piece of land.  They were not allowed to read the scriptures.  If by chance they heard the scriptures being recited, molten lead would be poured into their ears.  Their women had to be bare-breasted especially when the men of the higher castes passed by.  Kelu’s parents worked in the oil mills in those days of un

  The last quarter of the 20 th century witnessed the emergence of the systems perspective in contrast to the reductionist approach that was followed earlier.   The reductionist approach viewed phenomena by their parts and treated them as such.   For example, if you have a headache you kill the pain with an Anacin ignoring the harms done to the body by the drug.   In the systems perspective, you look at the whole rather than the parts.   You use available knowledge and technology to find out the root cause of the headache and make the whole system healthy.   Any system such as the human body or a society is not just the sum of its parts.  A system is a complex and inter-related network of interacting components.  Relationships among the components are of vital importance in any system.  India is not just a sum of its states and union territories (Gujarata-Maratha-Dravida-Utkala) or a sum of the various religious communities (Hindu-Muslim-Sikh-Isai).  Any nation is much mor

Over half a century ago, behavioural psychologist B F Skinner conducted a study with a group of pigeons in order to understand superstitious behaviour.  He used some simple technique to produce a certain physical response from the pigeons.  It was a response like raising a wing on the application of a stimulus. When the wing was raised, the pigeon’s behaviour was reinforced by giving it food.  The stimulus-response-reinforcement combo was repeated many times.  Finally the bird began to associate the behaviour (raising the wing) with the getting of food.  It thought that it got food because it raised its wing.  A superstition was born. Superstition is a mistaken understanding of the cause-effect relationship.  A few days back I was walking along the road when a cat, a black one at that, crossed the road in front of me.  There was only one other man walking in front of me when the incident took place.  He was rendered motionless as if struck dead by lightning.  He spat out hatefu

Whatever happens to me and is beyond my control is my destiny.  Natural calamities like earthquakes are beyond my control.  If I happen to be in a place where the terrorists have planted a bomb, that’s my destiny.  Accidents, diseases or other chance occurrences can alter my destiny in ways I could not have foreseen.  The stars that shine in the firmament above me are as much part of my destiny as is the darkness that descends ineluctably into the nooks and crannies along the way.     What I am is my destiny.  What I am is not entirely beyond my control, I know.  Except my genes and hormones.  Except the environment that brought me up and certain impacts of that upbringing.  “I am the sum total of everything that went before me...,” as Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Child says, “of everything done-to-me.”  I am a product of the history that went before me as much as the one that is unfolding around me.  The martyrdom of two Prime Ministers of my country is part of my destiny as mu

The World Book Fair is the latest entertainment in Pragati Maidan, New Delhi.  The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) (always a handmaiden of the Central Government) has sent out a directive to schools in the National Capital Region (NCR) asking them to take students to the Book Fair with a view to encourage reading habits among the young generation. Ten years ago, I took a group of students to the World Book Fair with the noble intention that CBSE is now envisaging.  The students were ingenious enough to find ways of entertaining themselves in places other than the book stalls.  While returning to school I discovered that barring one student nobody had bought a book.  Most of them had not even entered the Book Fair!  (Credit must be given for their candidness in admitting that.) Today’s students are enslaved by the smartphone and the tablet.  While these gadgets can take one to the world of infinite knowledge, they actually end up as drugs that pander to the narci

The Beas sparkled like molten silver with the gentle touch of the morning sun.  It could not assuage the mutiny that was mounting among Alexander’s soldiers, however. How long and how far?  Coenus, the general of Alexander’s army, raised the question.  We have come a long way in search of some mirage.  We have bathed in the Tigris and the Indus, played in the Nile and the Euphrates, sailed across the Oxus and the Jaxartes.  We breathed the air of deserts, mountains, steppes and fields.  We trudged miles and miles, thousands of miles.  Of victory, booty, glory and novelty, we’ve had our fill. Alexander looked into Coenus’s eyes. He saw longing in them.  Longing for wife.  For children.  Father and mother.  No harlot can ever replace the touch of the wife.  No victory can match the smiles of your children.  Eight years.  They’ve been away from their homeland for eight years. But we are conquerors, said Alexander.  Conquest is our way, our life, and our truth.  There is no

Selknam people who became extinct in 1974 because of Us-Them division made by ? When Angela Loij died in 1974, a tribe became extinct.  Angela was the last surviving woman of the Selknam tribe in Chile, South America.  Communism still survives in Latin America. Prakash Karat, one of the surviving Communists in India wants to join the AAP. Karat and his wife Brinda are supposed to be intellectuals. AAP belongs to ... Whom? The Anarchist Who should be relegated to the forest, as suggested by the Prime Minister of the country who claimed to belong to the working class but behaves more like a King of some buried era? Angela, the  Romantic fools still allowed to survive in India mourn the extinction of your race. Not for your sake.  Not at all for the sake of the colonists who killed your people. For the sake of the future generations. Not for the sake of “unity in uniformity” For which Our leaders want to drive the last nail on some coffins.