Tomichan Matheikal's blog

When Gulliver chose Dilliput from the list tourist destinations offered by the online operator, he was prompted by fervent Lilliputian nostalgia.  He could never forget those miniature creatures with so much national pride and cultural fervour.  He had read that Dilliput is inhabited by people with similar pride and fervour though they are far from being diminutive like the Lilliputians. The King of Dilliput was on yet another foreign voyage when Gulliver visited.  But the Prime Minister was happy to receive Gulliver.  He explained to Gulliver the achievements of the King within a year of his coronation.  He boasted about the tremendous achievements of the King in turning around the plummeting economy of the country, Make in Dilliput programme which has given employment to millions of citizens, land acquisitions to take development to the villages, creating bank accounts for every Dilliputian with subsidised insurance against accidents as well as death, cleanliness drives, aca

Aruna Ramachandra Shanbaug passed away this morning.  She lived 42 years in a bed of King Edward Memorial Hospital, Mumbai.  A brutal rape had rendered her comatose.  The rapist spent seven years in the prison and became a free man.  His victim lived in a vegetative state as a question mark on many things. The most controversial question her life raised was about the limits and possibilities of euthanasia when Pinki Virani, writer and human rights activist, moved the Supreme Court seeking euthanasia for Aruna in 2011.  Can anyone choose another person’s death however absurd that person’s life may be?  This was the question that the apex court was faced with.  Obviously, the court decided against Virani’s choice.  Yet can we blame Virani for what she did?  She was being compassionate to Aruna.  Compassion and justice need not always be on the same side of morality.  That was one of the paradoxes raised by Aruna’s life. Aruna’s relatives in her home state of Karnataka had aba

CBSE has decided to do away with Board exams in class 10.  This is what the latest decision is: I Scheme 1–   there shall be no Board Examination at Secondary (Class X) level for students studying in the schools affiliated to the Board who do not wish to move out of the CBSE system after Class X. Every School, Sahodaya Cluster or City may design its own date sheet for classes IX and X School Based Examination accordingly. II Scheme 2 –   is applicable to those students from affiliated schools who wish to move out of the CBSE system after Class X (Pre-University, Vocational course, Change of Board etc). Such students are required to take the Board’s External Examination at Secondary (Class X) level. Question papers and Marking Scheme will be prepared by the CBSE and evaluation will be carried out by the Board through External Examiners. Wow!  Don’t have to study anymore. I have been teaching in a CBSE school for the last 14 years.  I have watched the change in the

I go to Moopan just as other people go to temple or church.  Moopan is my inspiration, my spiritual succour. “Why don’t you let go, man?”  He asked when I mentioned my problem to him.  I had come to a situation in which I had to make a choice: whether to continue my job or turn to something else that my heart urges me to do.  “All through life people live like shopkeepers,” Moopan continued.  “How much profit did I make today?  Which items are the most popular?  What new item can I sell tomorrow?  Is this life?” He paused and stared at me a while.  “Did you ever live your life?”  I could feel his gaze penetrating through my heart into something that I may call soul.  “All through life people tie themselves with a chain to something: wealth, generally.  You have your monthly salary.  Each day you calculate how much you can spend on what, how much you should save, how to evade the tax – not that those who handle the tax are any less bastards than you....” “Let go the cha

“What is a participial phrase?” asked a teacher who was preparing for an interview because her school was being shut down by vested interests. “No clue,” I said.  “Never heard of such a thing.” She wondered how I had mastered the art of lying so quickly.  She refused to believe that I had not heard of such a thing as participial phrase.  She opened the grammar book she had brought (a fraction of which is here in the picture) and showed me the phrase.  It was a grammar textbook for grade 8.  I flipped through the pages and realised how ineffective English language teaching is in our country.  My memory went back to my childhood when they taught me things like Vocative Case and other Cases all of which disappeared without a trace from English grammar eventually. “See, dear,” I told the teacher, “I didn’t learn English by learning the grammar.  Did you learn your mother tongue by learning its grammar?” She pondered a while and said, “No.” “If I ask you abou

The original Malayalam version of the novel, Goat Days , is celebrating its hundredth reprint.  The novel tells the story of a young man named Najeeb who goes to the Gulf from Kerala in the 1990s in pursuit of his dreams for a better life: a decent home, a TV with a VCP, some gold ornaments for the family... What he gets, however, is a solitary life with a herd of goats somewhere in the Arabian deserts.  He is trapped inescapably between the burning desert sands and the freezing lonely nights.  Every attempt of his to explore beyond the enclosure assigned to him is met with inhuman punishments.  The goats eventually become his friends, the only friends, so much so that he consummates the bond by mating with a she-goat one night.  His dreams do not die, however.  He is innocent enough to dream endlessly.  His innocence and the dreams born of that innocence help him to escape finally. The novel is based on the experiences of a real person who is still living in Kerala, having r

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