Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Diwali is a festival that is sustained by multiple legends.  The people of Ayodhya lined up with lamps in their hands to welcome back Rama and Sita who had destroyed the evil named Ravana.  The return of the Pandavas after their exile used to add sheen to the Diwali diyas.  Krishna’s victory over Narakasura is commemorated in certain parts of India during Diwali.  The emergence of Lakshmi from the cosmic ocean which was churned by both the gods and the demons may shine in some of the Diwali lights.  The bulk of the universe consists of dark matter.  The 100 billion galaxies each of which may have about 100 billion stars have not dispelled much of the darkness.  Is darkness the essence of the universe?  Is light a diversion granted to the cosmos like the fireflies that come and go in the wildernesses?  If light was more abundant than darkness, perhaps Diwali would not have been celebrated.  Diwali is a reminder about the preponderance of darkness.  About the need to light

33 short stories of mine, most of which were written in the last couple of years, have been published in the form of a book, both printed and digital versions. As I wrote earlier , these stories emerged from the dilemmas and conflicts I faced when certain drastic changes took place where I was working until a few months back.  The changes started with sanctimonious pretensions and ended with a whole school being bulldozed into sheer vacuum.  Right in the capital of the world’s largest democracy.  The whole process was a dark drama which had occasional moments of hilarious farce and profound grotesqueness.  It was an ideal place for a writer to be at.  Human nature reveals itself without masks when survival is threatened.  Drama unfolds one after another.  People walk about with heads buckled down under depression.  People rebel and get thrown out.  Criminal charges are fabricated against those whose rebellion is a serious threat to the wielders of real power.  Life becomes a batt

One BJP minister beefs about his chief minister of the same party in Karnataka and goes to the extent of threatening to behead him if he ate beef “and play football with his severed head.”  We have so many beef-heads in the country who have bizarre notions about games and their tribe is increasing especially since the cow migrated from its usual habitats on the city streets to the new lullabies with which our present leaders are trying to put the whole nation to an intoxicated sleep.  The lullabies are, however, beginning to sound like beef-hearts – at least to some of us. The BJP chief minister of Karnataka does not eat beef.  He was merely defending the people’s right to eat whatever they liked.  But the BJP does not believe in such magnanimity.  It is a party beefed up by religious and cultural ideologies.  Religion has its god-given truths which no beef-head can transmute into beef-hearts.  A plain truth is that beef is no delicacy.  It is hard and extremely fibrous. 

According to Chetan Bhagat, a liberal in India today is a person who was born in an upper class family, received English education, absorbed the world culture, carried hotdogs to school in their tiffin box, visited Disneyland, and ridiculed those who spoke English in India with a vernacular accent.  The popular writer said this and much more in his Times of India article yesterday.  He goes on to reduce the current communal disturbances and acts of intolerance to a mere class struggle between the privileged and the underprivileged, the latter being the present-day nationalists whom the former refer to derogatorily as the right-wing, or sanghis, or bhakts, or chaddiwallahs.  “There is a reason why liberals are derogatorily referred to as pseudo-secular, pseudo-intellectual and pseudo-liberal,” claims Bhagat. “For their agenda is not to be liberal. Their agenda is to look down on the classes that don’t have the global culture advantage.”  He goes on to say that “If, for insta

Standing between yesterday’s history and tomorrow’s mystery, he clung to the wings of a dream with a hope born anew. Hope was the last item in Pandora’s box. Hope is the well that the desert hides somewhere within it. But he saw his companions falling on the way, falling dead. They had hope, they had dreams, that they would be free next Christmas. When Christmas passed, they postponed their dream to next Easter. Easter too came and went. Too many broken promises of hopes and dreams break the wings. Break the heart. Face the reality, he said to himself. We are in hell, that’s the truth. How to beat the heat, find the ways. That’s the real hope. Hope is not a longing. Hope is not a dream. Hope is the toil that breaks the shackle bit by bit. The last item in Pandora’s box. Note : The poem was inspired by the Stockdale Paradox.  Admiral Jim Stockdale was a United States military officer held captive for eight years during the Vietna

Rama consigned Sita to the flames.  Krishna made many husbands cuckolds.  And they are our gods.  Their love ought to be true love.  Really? Helen and Paris loved each other and started a war which killed thousands of people.  Was that true love? Antony loved Cleopatra to such an extent that they died for each other, killing many in the process. Jesus Christ loved mankind so much that he let himself be crucified and then went on to be worshipped as a god.  True love? The Buddha was not much of a lover, I think.  He was too indifferent.  But if we were to live with him, we would have found him the ideal human being, almost a god.  Indifferent.  But never judgemental.  Eccentric and yet the most sane.  True love? Mother Teresa loved everybody because she saw the face of Jesus in everybody.  She loved Jesus.  Not Tom, Syed or Hari.  Was that true love? Mahatma Gandhi loved his principles more than his wife or children.  True love? I love Mr Narendra Modi be

Mat wanted to die because he thought life was too frivolous an affair to deserve itself.  He had already consulted many experts on the matter before he ran into me. The doc whom he approached for medical assistance bluntly refused.  “You want me to spend the rest of my life in prison?” asked the doc furiously.   “What prevented the doc from giving me the injection was fear of the prison,” Mat explained to me.  "Not any love of life." “If the law did not prevent suicide, would you have helped me?” Mat asked the doc.  “If I try to commit suicide and fail, will the law be punishing me for failing to live or for failing to die?” The doc stared blankly into Mat’s eyes.  Then the blankness became fury.  “Get out,” he said. Then Mat went to his pastor.  “Nowhere in the Bible is it said that suicide is a sin,” explained Mat to the pastor.  And the pastor thought Mat was right.  The Old Testament’s Yahweh was very fond of rules and regulations.  In fact, the on