Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Book Review One of the characters in Salman Rushdie’s controversial novel, The Satanic Verses , argues that doubt rather than disbelief is the opposite of faith because disbelief is as certain as faith.  Doubt is uncertainty, a refusal to take sides.  Doubt is the ultimate openness towards phenomena.  Doubt can question both, faith as well as disbelief.  Jennifer Michael Hecht’s book, Doubt: a History , is a masterpiece that presents to the reader all the great doubters from the ancient Indian Carvakas and the Greek Xenophanes to our own Salman Rushdie and Natalie Angier.  The best feature of the book is its readability in spite of the highly philosophical themes it deals with.  The next best is that it does not confine itself to philosophers, rather it discusses novelists, scientists, historians and others of some significance who have contributed to the history of doubt. Thousands of people have been killed merely because they questioned certain religions.  In the hey

Fiction “Why am I so black when you are so fair?” Veena asked her mother fondly touching the latter’s hand.  “They call me Black Beauty in the school.” “Ask your father,” said mother who was busy cooking the dinner.  Father was dark in complexion, that’s what mother really meant.  But Veena had not grasped that.  She went to her father since he was a better friend than mother.   The only reason why she had bothered to ask mother was that when her first bleeding took place it was to mother that father directed her summarily.  That was just a few days ago.  “There are some things that only your mother can explain,” father had said.  Veena thought that the colour of the skin was also as mysterious a matter as the blood that came out from the unmentionable part of her body. “You got my colour, dear,” said father putting aside Akhil Sharma’s Family Life which he was reading.  “Don’t you like it?” Veena’s nose twitched and her lips pouted.  She realised that she had been u

A longing for the end, a flash of awareness, and eternal stillness.   That’s how I would like my death to be. Not only life but death also must have dignity.  I have been a staunch supporter of euthanasia for this one reason alone.  The moment I broach the topic of euthanasia people run away.  Death is a topic nobody apparently wants to discuss.  Is death so abhorrent or alarming? “I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens,” said Woody Allen facetiously.  Most people seem to be afraid of death.  Life has a natural tendency to prolong itself however agonising it may be.  The survival instinct is the strongest instinct in any living organism.  But that cannot wish away death.  Death is inevitable.  What is inevitable has to be accepted.  Graceful acceptance of the inevitable is an integral part of dignity. But graceful acceptance is not enough.  One should be allowed to die when one chooses.  No conditions attached.  No questions asked.  It is

Outside one of the prominent schools in Delhi.  The parents have to stand on the roadside to pay fees, submit leave applications for their wards, or make an appointment with a teacher or the principal.

Fiction A few years ago, I was holidaying in Kerala.  One of the many journeys found me reaching the sleepy little town nearest to my home late in the night.  The last bus to the village had left three hours ago.  A couple of auto-rickshaws waited languidly for weary passengers.  I was not weary and I decided to walk.  The few drinks I had just had along with a light dinner roused up the romantic spirit in me.  I thought of the winding village road lined with a variety of trees on both the sides.  The sound of cicadas kept me company as soon as I left behind the lights of the town.  There were very few street lights.  Fireflies danced mirthfully teasing me.  The moon shone brightly in the sky and the beams filtered through the leaves of the trees casting weird patterns on the road.  Occasionally a dog barked from some veranda and then went to sleep again.  The village cemetery lay a few hundred metres from my home.  As I passed by the cemetery I saw a figure standing in t

Sunday Musings If I do not want to go to heaven, whose business is it to decide otherwise for me?  I have come across scores of people who insist on deciding what I should or should not do so that my soul is saved from perdition. They have taken much pain to attach too many strings all along my way and pull them in certain directions applying the torque of their calculation so that my soul is not lost for eternity.  It always baffled me why my soul was so important to them when there were/are millions of other people who stand in genuine need of benevolence. When I stumbled on Emile Durkheim recently I got some kind of an answer.  God is a lever with which people are elevated to heaven using the fulcrum of religion.  No, Durkheim didn’t say it in those words.  I’m paraphrasing him.  But why does anyone take the trouble to do all that leveraging?  Because every society seeks order, a social system.  And God is the most effective tool for forging that system.  All those p

The violinist played the last note with a solemn sway of the bow and then bowed to the audience with a proud panache.  His heart longed for an applause.  Then came one clap from somewhere.  Two.  A few more.  And it spread across the auditorium.  The ego of the violinist was pleased. It’s only much later he learnt that most people in the auditorium were deaf.  Still later he learnt that the two or three people who initiated the applause were bribed to do so. Apparently the above is a moral science story meant to teach humility.  The sheer truth is that the writer of the story was flexing his ego by writing it.  I have adapted the story from Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), great philosopher.  He told the story with the intention of accusing his audience (readers) of metaphorical deafness.  He wanted to prove that his readers lacked the brains to understand him. Schopenhauer Schopenhauer had published his masterpiece, The World as Will and Idea .  In his letter t