Tomichan Matheikal's blog

One of the best poems about Christmas that I’ve read is T. S. Eliot’s Journey of the Magi .  My short story, The First Christmas , was largely inspired by this poem. “The world went on with its usual activities of finding food, conquering lands, vanquishing other people, mating and reproducing, killing and plundering, building and destroying.”  The narrator of the story, one of the three magi, says that.  Caspar, the narrator, was on a quest because he could find no meaning in a life that revolved around eating, conquering, mating, and so on.  “If human life is the progress from being a bold, free and above all creative child to cowardice, dependence and creativity that ends in procreation in a span of about 60 or 70 years and then succumbing to death as a child in the garb of an old creature, then, my beloved, I have nothing to be proud of being born a man.”  Thus says the narrator of a Malayalam novel ( Manushyanu Oru Amukham -  A Preface to Man ) which I read soon after

“Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are,”   said Benjamin Franklin.  The release of the 20 year-old man who had perpetrated the most diabolic deeds on a woman against whom he had no reason to have any grudge highlights the helplessness of justice.  Asha Devi, mother of Jyoti Singh, being consoled by Shabana Azmi instead of by Justice The law is helpless since it is bound to follow the written codes.  The criminal was a juvenile when he attacked a 23 year-old paramedical student three years ago in a cold winter night in Delhi.  The juvenile satiated his lust.  Not contented with that, he went on to gratify the monster within him by inflicting the most inhuman atrocities on the hapless victim.   And tomorrow he will walk free.  Because the law is helpless!  The law has to follow the written code that a juvenile cannot be retained in the correction home more than three years.   What is the helplessness of the law doing

I have set a diminutive reading target for the coming year for various reasons.   Just five novels.  If everything goes well (and I’m no optimist), the list may lengthen as the calendar turns.  Well! Umberto Eco Topping the list is Umberto Eco’s new novel, Numero Zero .  The only novel of the author that I have read is his very first one, the one that sold millions of copies in the 1980s,  Name of the Rose .  It was a thriller dexterously peppered with philosophy, theology, history and mystery.  Numero Zero will be released in India in a couple of days.  It traces a conspiracy linking a long line of events in Italian history, from the death of Mussolini to the 1978 kidnapping and assassination of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro by the Red Brigade.  The Piazza Fontana bombing, the sudden death of Pope John Paul I, the Vatican banking scandal, the P2 Masonic lodge, and the shooting of Pope John Paul II, all find their place in the plot.  Many reviewers have not been very kind

Here are three different handshakes given recently by Prime Minister Mr Modi. "I have the control, Baby." A few days back Mr Modi and Rahul Gandhi shook hands when they met during the birthday celebrations of Sharad Pawar.  The handshake shows clearly who the Boss is.  But the eye contacts are of equals. See the eye contact below.  Notice the handshake too. Mr Oommen Chandy, Kerala Chief Minister, welcomed the Prime Minister in Kochi yesterday.  The Prime Minister cannot look Mr Chandy in the eye because the latter was chucked out of a function attended by the Prime Minister.  The strong feeling in Kerala is that Mr Modi wanted Mr Chandy out. And one more handshake from Kerala.  With Archbishop George Alancheril. The typical politician's handshake.  " The glove handshake is sometimes called the politician’s handshake. The initiator tries to give the receiver the impression that he is trustworthy and honest, but when this technique is used on a

Fiction Susanna’s beauty disturbed the men’s sleep.   Both Shimon and Moshe were of an age that usually tempered the passions.  Moreover, they were responsible leaders of the community.  Shimon was a rabbi and Moshe was an exegete.  If bald head was the sign of one man’s wisdom, grey hairs proclaimed the sagacity of the other.   Susanna had never expected them to do this. Painting: Guido Reni “Mate with us,” they told her bluntly.  “Or else we will bring charges of adultery against you and get you stoned to death as per the law.” Susanna had just finished her bath in the pool.  She had sent away her maids as usual and ordered them to lock the gates.  She didn’t want even her maids to see her bathing.  Her body was her private property which even the maids should not see.  Only Joachim, her husband, had access to it.  That was how Yahweh had ordained it from the time of Adam who exclaimed upon seeing Eve, “The bone of my bones!  The flesh of my flesh!” People lik

Fiction Mukul was one of the many thousands of devotees of Radheshyam Baba.  What drew Mukul to the Baba’s ashram was curiosity rather than spirituality.  What kept him returning to the ashram was Gopika, one of the many women who managed the front offices of Radheshyam Baba.  The first thing that struck Mukul when he visited the ashram for the first time was the absence of men from the reception and other offices as well as counters.  Men managed the main gate and the security there.  Once you pass the security check, you are in a land of Gopikas.  Krishna’s Radhas.  Radheshyam Baba’s Babies. Mukul saw Gopika at the reception desk during his first visit to the ashram.  She smiled as he approached the desk on which was placed the sign ‘ENQUIRY.’  He had nothing to enquire about except the name of the charming young woman who stood behind the sign with an indeterminate smile which struck him as less plastic than the smiles of the other women he would see in the ashram ev

English philosopher, C E M Joad, defined civilisation as thinking new thoughts, making new things, and obeying the rules for the smooth functioning of the society.  Yet we don’t find such people in our history books.  Our history books are filled with people who killed others, conquered their lands, and imposed themselves on other people.  How many Indians have heard of Satyendranath Bose though there is a subatomic particle (Boson) named after him?  How many Indians are ready to recognise the name Ali Akbar Khan though he is known to the world as the Indian Johann Sebastian Bach?  Why does the genius of a Shakespeare get eclipsed by a Queen Elizabeth in history books though Shakespeare’s contribution to civilisation far outweighs that of the Queen?  These are some of the many thoughts that crossed my mind as I read the very long article by A. G. Noorani, ‘ India’s Sawdust Caesar ,’ in the latest issue of Frontline .  “A year and a half after he became Prime Minister of Ind