Tomichan Matheikal's blog

‘Do you think your leg is a part of yourself?’  The Judge asked the convict. ‘Yes.’  The convict was confident. ‘What about the bacteria in your intestines...?’  The convict’s eyes bulged.  He seemed to know nothing about bacteria, and that too in his stomach. ‘There won’t be no digestion of what you eat without them bacteria in your gut,’ the Judge explained condescendingly before proceeding to the next question with his usual solemnity.  ‘What about the stream from which you take your drinking water?  Is the stream a part of yourself?’ The convict blinked. ‘Is your cow a part of you?  Is the land on which your cow grazes a part of you?  Are you a part of the landscape and all that it holds, a part of Nature, a part of the universe, one with the streams and rocks, trees and grass, buffaloes and grasshoppers?  What makes you think a cow is more a part of the universe than a Muslim?’ The convict’s eyes, which were lifeless until then, glared at the last word

Mr Ram Jethmalani is disillusioned with Mr Narendra Modi.  “I thought God had sent him as his ‘Aulia’ [representative] for India’s salvation... How I became the victim of fraud,” said the eminent lawyer who was in Bihar asking the people there to defeat the BJP in the imminent elections.  And he is a BJP MP in the Rajya Sabha! “Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion,” said Arthur Koestler whose faith in communism met with a tragic end because of Stalin, a leader who had made tall promises to his country.  Mr Jethmalani may not possess the insightfulness of Koestler to understand that “As long as chaos dominates the world, God is an anachronism; and every compromise with one’s own conscience is perfidy. When the accursed inner voice speaks to you, hold your hands over your ears…” [ Darkness at Noon , Koestler’s illustrious novel].  Hence a few blustering dialogues in Bihar will ease the pain in his heart which will soon be ready for compromises.  Our politicians ha

One of the many creatures that Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s classical Little Prince encounters on the earth is a fox.  The creature approaches the Prince with a weird request.  “Please tame me,” pleaded the fox.  The Prince did not know the meaning of ‘tame’.  “It means to establish ties,” explained the fox.  Without the ties, the boy would be just another boy for the fox just as the fox would be just another fox for the boy who don’t need each other in any way.  “But if you tame me,” continues the fox, “then we shall need each other.  To me, you will be unique in all the world.  To you, I shall be unique in all the world.” Little Prince and the Fox When you establish the “ties” the person or thing becomes unique to you, the Prince understands.  He remembers the rose which he used to look after on his own planet.  He watered it, he made a special glass enclosure for its safety, he killed caterpillars for its sake.  The Prince refers to the rose with the personal pronoun ‘she’