Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Finally Tony Blair has admitted that the 2003 Iraq war was a mistake. Juan Cole, teacher and writer, compares Blair's apology to that of the little boy who, on being asked to apologise for calling a lady "fat," said, "Lady, I'm sorry you're fat." America, under the leadership of the quixotic Bush Jr, wanted to secure its hegemony in the Middle East particularly for grabbing the petroleum available there.  Even after the United Nations Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) reported that it could not discover any weapon of mass destruction in Kuwait, Don Quixote of America led his army against the country with the passionate support of his Sancho Panza, Tony Blair. Thousands of people were killed.  Precious properties were destroyed. Thousands of people were displaced.  Many more thousands were left as survivors suffering from chronic heartaches.  And quite a few thousand terrorists were spawned by the heartaches. India is witn

Suresh was watching Bajrangi Bhaijaan when I dropped in. “It is easy to peddle hatred,” a TV reporter in the movie was saying, “love gets few takers.”  But the movie ended in the victory of love over hatred with the Pakistani Muslims and the Indian Hindus gathering on either side of the international border clamouring for love.  “Why does a meek creature like the cow instigate so much aggression among people?”  I asked when the movie was over.   “Why the cow, even an inanimate thing like a piece of cloth cut in a particular geometrical shape can instigate aggression the moment religion becomes fanaticism,” said Suresh.  “And religion becomes fanaticism only when the character of the person is domineering and aggressive.” Suresh went on to explain that the submissive person who is religious surrenders himself to whatever virtues his religion teaches him such as compassion or selflessness.  The surrender can go to extremes depending on the degree of the believer’s re

I have collected 33 short stories of mine into an ebook which will be published next week.  Most of these stories were written in the last two years and published in my blog .  Just to give a taste of what the stories are like, let me give the links to three stories selected at random: Ahalya – the first story in the volume And quiet flowed the Beas – the tenth story The Nomad Learns Morality – the title story The volume is dedicated to “Radha Soami Satsang Beas especially Dr Pranita Gopal.”  RSSB is a religious organisation which took over a school in Delhi where I was teaching for quite a while.  In about two years the organisation bulldozed the school to smithereens.  The bulldozer became my guru and muse.  However, the stories are in no way related to the school or RSSB.  Not at all to the bulldozer.  Not even to Dr Pranita Gopal.  All these happened to be my best inspirers.  I’m obliged to them eternally.  Were it not for them, the potential for fiction writin