Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker has shown that people can go to any length and expose themselves to any risk merely to prove that the myths they live by are actually true.  The Brussels bombing is the latest episode in man’s quest for converting myths into truths. Myths are necessary for making life bearable.  How miserable would life be without the consolations offered by the pie that is awaiting us in the sky after death?  How can we survive without those gods at whose feet we can unload the burdens in our hearts? As long as gods remain painkillers and shock absorbers, they are harmless.  But the problem is when their worshippers want to impose their painkillers and shock absorbers as the only entities of the kind on everybody in the world.  Christianity did this for a whole five centuries from about 1050 to 1550 CE in the name of crusades.  Did the world become any better place for all those killings and brutality and conversions and what not? Today we have peo

Once I presented a copy of the book, Amen , by Sister Jesme to a couple who visited me.  A few days later I came to know that the husband had flung it out of the car as they were returning home.  “I won’t let such books in our home,” he said as he stopped the car near one of the many garbage heaps belonging to the Municipal Corporation. Sister Jesme’s book is not a particularly outstanding work in any way.  It shows that the Catholic Church is as corrupt as any human institution is.  It elaborates on the sins and human weaknesses that exist in the religious congregation to which the nun (Sister Jesme) belonged until she left it in disgust as well as the realisation that it was meaningless to continue living a life of sheer hypocrisy.  I gifted it to the couple because the lady had shown some interest in it when she saw it on my book shelf and also because the gentleman was very closely associated with the Church and would not allow any criticism of the Church within his hearing

Ghulam Nabi Azad did not really compare the terrorist outfit, Islamic State, with RSS.   He says he only mentioned the two in the same breath.   He was opposed to both. Though the IS and RSS may share a few things in common, putting them on two sides of the same balance is preposterous.  Tavleen Singh, in her column in The Indian Express , elaborates on that preposterousness and then goes on to assert that she grew up despising RSS.  This is what she says: I found their aggressive nationalism silly and their obsession with Hindu revivalism boring. I still do. I believe that reducing the vast wealth of Indian civilisation to a debate about beef is vandalism. Since Narendra Modi became Prime Minister, we have seen far too many of his partymen exhibit their complete ignorance about Hindu civilisation by spreading hatred against those who eat beef and believing that they do this in the cause of reviving Hindu thought from Vedic times. Most of them have learned their ideas from R

In all probability, most of the richest people in the world today were not exceptional academicians at school.  Most of the powerful political leaders might not have scored very high marks at school.  Conversely, the top scorers at school need not become highly successful in life.  In short, academic brilliance particularly at school seems to have little to do with success in life if we associate success with conquering certain quanta of wealth or power (or both).  More scandalising is the possibility that many of the best scholars at school did not achieve anything much in life by way of what is normally meant by success.  I don’t know if any detailed research has been done on this recently.  I know that psychologist Lewis Terman (1877-1956) carried out a very detailed research on a large number of highly gifted students and found out that a good many of the highly gifted students did not really make it big in life.  He realised that apart from high level of intelligence

Book Review Iran witnessed revolutions based on communism as well as Islam.  Like all revolutions, they had their share of bloodshed and frenzy, narrow perspectives and flatulence.  Revolutions make heroes of some and victims of many others.  Opportunists fish in the troubled waters and reap rich dividends.  In the end, nothing really changes for the majority for whom one form of oppression is replaced with another. In The Book of Fate , Persian writer Parinoush Saniee tells us the story of both the revolutions that rocked Iran.  The story is narrated by Massoumeh who is a young school-going girl at the beginning of the novel.  She is 53 at the end.  The novel is essentially about her painful experiences in a country which has too many rules for women.  Girls are meant only for procreation and education is not required for that.  Girls should not reveal their teeth while laughing, nor can they laugh loud.  They are not even allowed an identity: their face has to be conce

Have you read   Reading Lolita in Tehran ? I have just begun reading it. I am stuck on something.  On the very first page, I find the words "that in the final analysis we are our own betrayers, playing Judas to our own Christ." If and when you have sometime, can you please write something on it? I received this email from a blogger friend yesterday.  My impulsive response was to say ‘No’ because I know the statement in the quote is true and, worse, I know that I have a Judas within me.  On a second thought, I decided to honour the trust placed in me by a good friend. When I began my contemplation on the topic, the first thing that came to my mind was a story that appears in the opening pages of Richard Bach’s novel, Illusions .  There are some aquatic creatures that spend their entire life sticking to the bottom of the river.  They just cling.  Life is nothing but that clinging for them.  One day they spot a creature just like them floating on the water

The godman brought the world to the banks of the Yamuna and proved that India is a tolerant country.  He invited even Boutros Boutros Ghali who passed away a month ago and thus showed that India’s tolerance extends even to the world beyond.  The Prime Minister stood beside the godman and proclaimed that India had much “to offer to the world because of its cultural diversity.” When the PM was declaring his tolerance to the whole world from the banks of the Yamuna, the Milli Gazette published an article by Pushp Sharma with the headline: “ We don’t recruit Muslims”: says Modi govt’s Ayush Ministry .  The journalist had received the information through an RTI filed by him.  The godman’s Cultural Fest presided over by the Prime Minister was open to international diversity.  Is the country open to diversity within it?  If not, what was the Cultural Fest but a mere show, a gigantic exercise in hypocrisy?  Sri Sri Ravi Shankar was an ardent supporter of Mr Narendra Modi