Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Google celebrated the genius of Shakespeare on his death anniversary (23 April) with a doodle.  Shakespeare deserves commemorations and celebrations.  What has fascinated me the most is the theme of betrayal in Shakespeare.  Our own experiences determine our favourite themes.  “To be or not to be” is a question that rose from the gut of the wavering prince of Denmark whose trust in mankind was betrayed by none other than his mother.  There was poison in that mother’s heart.  When she smiled serpents writhed in their mating pits.  “Die, die,” hissed the serpents to the wavering intellectual.  Death is the noblest consummation in the world of betrayals.  If your mother betrays you, if she betrays her husband your father, what more is left in the world to be trusted?  How many heartaches should we suffer before we can shuffle off our mortal coil?  How many thousand natural shocks is our flesh heir to? Shakespeare’s Hamlet asked those and umpteen other questions.  In thos

The more notorious a criminal you are, the more respected you are in Tihar, says Kobad Ghandy in his Indian Express column .  The petty thieves and other little criminals vie with one another to join the notorious ones.  Your very survival, let alone success, depends on how close you are to the great guns.  Virtue will undo you.  Principles will turn into knots round your neck.  Kobad Ghandy knows what he is speaking about.  He has spent seven years in Tihar.  Seven years in Tihar is enough to dehumanise anyone, writes Ghandy. Is this true only of Tihar?  Isn’t it true for the entire country?  Where do you find virtue and principles in the public life of the country?  Criminals and murderers occupy eminent seats in the parliament and state assemblies.  Mafia dons and land grabbers masquerade as godmen.  The poor become poorer and end their lives on knots that descend in various shapes from above.  The rich are given more and more.  What little the poor have is ta

Delivering a Martin Luther King Jr Memorial lecture, actor Kamal Haasan said that “incomplete minds that somehow manage to reach the seat of power” create inequality.  He went on to say that enlightened minds are with the poor.  Power is something that attracts only “incomplete minds,” generally.  Power is one way of completing oneself, filling up the blanks within.  Why don’t we find scientists, philosophers (writers), artists and other such people in politics running after power?  Probably, their minds are not so “incomplete.”  Or they find better means of filling the blanks within: by inventing something new, thinking new ideas or creating works of art.  Those who are incapable of such creative contributions hanker after power.  Boss over others and prove your worth! Imposing oneself on others is precisely what’s wrong with these incomplete minds.  We find them imposing their ideas, religion, culture, food habits, dress, anything and everything on others. Dacher K

Book Review Author:  Rakhi Jayashankar Publisher: Cyberwit.net Pages: 215 Waves in the sky narrates the story of six girls who studied together in the same school and were popularly known as the Canaries.  CANARY is an acronym for Charu, Ananya, Neha, Avantika, Raihana and Yami, the six girls whose story unfolds in the novel.  The girls grow up and go to different colleges and also learn about some betrayals that had occurred within the group when they were at school.  Not all friendships are genuine.  People have various motives for being part of a group and some of the motives may lead one to betray the group or some members of the group for one’s own personal interests.  Life is full of incidents that are born of betrayals by friends as well as relatives.  The novel explores some such betrayals or even plain murders.  Some of the murders can shock the male readers.  Are women capable of such cruelty?  Can a mother kill her own offspring? The back cover blu

Happiness is as simple as “a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea.”  The Buddha is not required for arriving at enlightenment.  In fact, the kind of enlightenment brought by the Buddha can be anti-life.  The Buddha can be a demon within.   Zorba is the antithesis of the Buddha.  Zorba is the protagonist of Nikos Kazantzakis’s classical novel, Zorba the Greek .  The narrator of the novel is a young intellectual who has decided to bid goodbye to books for a while and take up active life.  He wants to be with people.  Zorba, an elderly man with boundless and unconstrained passion for life, becomes the narrator’s companion.  No, not just companion but his Buddha. A scene from the movie Zorba the Greek However, the kind of enlightenment that Zorba brings differs totally from what the Buddha had brought.  If life was “sorrow” for the Buddha, it is “trouble” for Zorba.  The highest point you can arrive at in life is not knowledge or

“When the state itself disregards the law, what is to be done?” is a question raised in the lead article of the latest Frontline .  The article is about the Chhattisgarh government’s oppression of the tribal people in order to snatch their lands and hand them over to the corporate bigwigs in the name of development. The authors argue that the BJP has converted many parts of the country into a laboratory for “neoliberal Hindutva” which combines “Hindutva communalism with a corporate-driven development agenda.”  Mission 2016 is the name of the game in Chhattisgarh.  It seeks to evict the Adivasis from the forests using various oppressive measures such as branding them as Maoists and torturing them.  Various new organisations have come up whose members roam the Adivasi regions, pull up people, demand answers, and threaten outsiders such as lawyers, journalists and activists. Why have governments turned so anti-people and pro-corporate?  There may be many answers.  Throughout h

A scene from the terrace of an apartment in Delhi Water is the foundation of life. 500,000 litre water was brought to Latur in Maharashtra yesterday by train from a distance of 350 km and each person in Latur got less than one litre. The cricket pitch and other places belonging to the privileged sections get water galore while the poor have to wait for the water trains to come with one litre of water for each person. Delhi is one place which taught me that success belongs to those who can wrench it mercilessly by hook or by crook. Now Maharashtra is teaching us a lesson about water.