Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Real togetherness is the relationship between the tree and the earth.  One draws its sustenance from the other.  Both draw life from each other.  Necessarily.  Ineluctably.  That ineluctability is the real togetherness.  But the extraction is based on a deep understanding.  The tree needs the earth for driving its hungry roots down as much as the earth needs the tree for materialising its fecundity.  When the infant draws life from its mother’s breasts, the mother is enriched too.  That mutual enrichment is real togetherness. Real togetherness is when man and woman probe into the eyes of each other and see oneself reflected in the eyes of the other.  The other becomes a lake into which one plunges to emerge in a while with enhanced zest for life.  The breeze of the heavens wafts through the necessary interstices of that zest.  Real togetherness is the essence of the apple that Eve and Adam bit into before being ejected summarily from God’s patronisation.  It is grap

"The devil called god must indeed be marvellous," exclaims a character in Subhash Chandran's Malayalam novel,  'Manushyanu Oru Amukham,' (A Preface to Man).  The novel has already won many eminent and well-deserved awards. The protagonist argues that the dog which accompanied Yudhishtira to heaven must be a stray creature and the moral is that a man who ignores his fellow creatures in his single-minded pursuit of heaven is no better than a stray dog. Yudhishtira had not cared to throw as much as a loving gaze at his people who were falling dead on the way. Contemporary Yudhishtiras are beseiging the gates of heaven accompanied by holy cows.

Two centuries of wandering in the valley of withered sedges was brought to an end for the Knight of la Belle Dame sans Merci when an adventure-tourist gifted him a digital camera. "In case you bump into her," advised the tourist,  " click a snap.  It might serve to forewarn future potential victims. " It is immaterial whether the tourist was a universal do-gooder or was merely playing a practical joke on the haggard and woe-begone Knight.   What matters here is that the gift transformed the Knight's life. His camera lapped up the beauty of the landscapes that stretched farther and farther from the valley of fairy sedges.   Undulating landscapes and riotous horizons became digital heartbeats in the Knight's camera.  Country roads flanked by thriving flora composed heavenly rhapsodies. Every road invariably led to a twilight.  In the dimness of twilights, in the most insignificant crannies of landscapes,  in the unlikeliest places,  the Knight disco

Horse: If you don’t want to be a caterpillar, how can you become a butterfly? Caterpillar: Did you pass through so many stages before you became a horse? Horse: Not exactly the same stages.  But stages, yes. Caterpillar: Was it hard?  The stages, I mean. Horse: It depends.  Being a caterpillar is not hard for all caterpillars, I guess. Caterpillar: One grows up only by passing through the stages? Horse: One grows real only by passing through the stages. Caterpillar: Real? Horse: Opposite of fraud, let’s say. Caterpillar: Why should anyone be a fraud? Horse: Discontent, I guess.  Not happy being what you are.  Wanting to be something else.  Somebody else. Caterpillar: Like me? Horse: Well.  There are many creatures who are unhappy about what they are.  Who want to be somebody else.  Becoming real is a slow process, I guess.  It needs patience.  Like being a caterpillar crawling on leaves.  And then a chrysalis.  Caterpillar: But o

Purity I used to be Snow White until I was bored And drifted in quest of colours And met holders of magic mirrors. Colours come in at the cost of whiteness. Generosity My generosity with words overflowed Until the words became flames And she said she was ready to burn herself Wasn’t she doing it from day one, she asked. Truthfulness So many holy books full of truths for which people kill one another. And I’m still seeking that truth which doesn’t demand so much blood. Forgiveness Every time I joined my palms in rueful prayer God said he had already forgiven me. But I couldn’t forgive him for making me a beggar again and again. Modesty I have a tail that’s nothing much to boast about, It loves to get in the way sometimes just to show off whatever colours and plumes it has; The silly little thing is attached to me as I am to it.

It is a blessing to be able to smile after you have crossed over into that period of life which people would rather refer to with the help of some euphemism than plainly as ‘old age.’  When friends of the same age group counsel you condescendingly that “age is a matter of the mind,” you are free to smile.  Smile at the condescension.  Or you can smile at the hypocrisy.  Or self-delusion, if you wish to look at it that way.  You are free to smile when people choose to call it positive thinking.  And you can smile all the way as you drive to some Art of Living prayer session which will teach you avant-garde terminology for the senility that inevitably catches up with you. The realisation that life is all the sound and fury that transpires between the wail that marks your arrival on the scene and the gasp that pushes you out can be an ideal source of smile.  The lessons that your near and dear ones tried to teach you in the countless scenes of the drama of life may deserve pretty

You are dying, Columbus. I wish your corpse would carry to your grave the sins you committed against whole races of people, my people, and all the other people, whom you held to ransom in the name of a god and a king and his queen. What were you but a thief, a murderer and a rapist? You came armed with a sword in one hand and the Bible in the other. Our women were naive to welcome you with gifts of parrots and bales of cotton; They showered their hospitality on you and made spears for your men on your demand. And you killed them with those spears after raping them. Did your god smile when you poured the baptismal water on our infants who grew up to be plunderers of the earth like you? We were clay in your hands and you moulded us in your image. We despise us in your image. PS: America is celebrating Oct 12 as Columbus Day.