Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Historical Fiction “What is truth?” Sitting in his dismal cell in the Tower of London, Francis Bacon started his inquiry into the metaphysics of truth.  He was found guilty on no less than 23 charges of corruption.  If Edward Coke, his lifelong enemy, was not the leader of the investigation team, he would have been found innocent.  The Tower Such is truth.  Bacon knew it very well.  Truth depends on which side of the power you are.  That is why even Jesus could not answer the question. “What is truth?” asked Pilate to Jesus.  Bacon continued his inquiry.  He was writing an essay.  Pilate did not wait for the answer.  Nor did Jesus answer.  The answer would have served no purpose for either.  Truth is what serves your purpose. “Truth is like pearl looking best in daylight,” wrote Bacon.  “But it will not rise to the price of a diamond that looks best in varied lights.  A mixture of lie always adds pleasure.  The lie converts the pearl into diamond.  Prose into po

The RSS has decided to grow up from shorts to trousers.  Can we hope that the change in the organisation’s sartorial taste is indicative of some attitudinal changes?  After all, the trousers are not traditional Indian dress.  Will the RSS broaden its ideological landscape to include certain good aspects of the culture from which it is downloading the bottoms? If the RSS were to stick to Indian culture, it would have to prescribe the dhoti to its members since that was the traditional dress of Indian men for a very long period although there were innovative ways of wearing it.  The long piece of unstitched cloth was the easiest dress to manufacture.  Stitching was not required.  Even the women’s sari belongs to that ancient period.  Though the Indian men have opted for the more convenient trousers, the women have chosen to retain the inconveniences wrapped in the five-metre tapestry.  But the RSS is averse to women.  So their sartorial options will be narrowed down to a choice

Fiction His life was an incessant motion, upward and downward, without any real destination.  He was a liftman in the forty-five storey Narayana Apartment. “Narayana!”  Each day of his began with an invocation to his God.  “Give me the patience to endure this purposeless motion.” “If I move up to the 43 rd floor by this lift and return to the ground floor from where I started, what is my displacement, assuming that each floor is 4 metres in height?”  The young boy asked the girl the other day.  They were students who lived on the 43 rd floor. It was that day that he learnt the tragic truth about his life.  He lived a life with zero displacement.  In spite of being in motion for over eight hours a day seven days a week, zero displacement!  Motion without displacement, that was his life. “Narayana!”  He invoked his God again.  Habitually. It was a painful realisation.  That he would live an entire life of motion without achieving any displacement.  His pain wa