Tomichan Matheikal's blog

In a rather sentimentally titled article, The Saddest Trend , The Economist says that more and more people are committing suicide in the country of “inexorable progress.”  From 1999 to 2014, the suicide rates in America rose by 24%.  The article does not list any reasons.  America is a dream for many people in the world.  So many Asians are willing to sacrifice their lifetime savings in order to be able to migrate and live in America, the perceived paradise on earth.  America, the land of progress, the land of dreams, the zenith of human aspirations.  Yet the Americans are choosing to end their lives prematurely!  “Men shoot themselves, women take poison,” tells the article pithily.  Let the reasons be, whatever they are.  We shall wait for experts to analyse them. In the meanwhile, we may ask ourselves why is India, our country, leaving no stone unturned in following in the footsteps of this nation whose people are choosing death over life.  Don Quixote and Sancho Pa

The latest issue of Frontline has put women’s equality on the cover.  India, which dreams of being a political superpower, is still paradoxically grappling with discriminations of all sorts: caste, religion, gender, language, and what not.  We still have religious leaders like Swami Swaroopanand Saraswati, the Sankaracharya of Dwarkapeeth in Gujarat, who preach such claptrap as that the recent firework accident in a Kerala temple occurred because of the people who demand equality for women with respect to temple entry.  We have political leaders like Pankaja Munde, Women and Child Development Minister of Maharashtra, who uphold the discrimination in the name of “tradition.”  The Dancing Girl of Mohenjodaro How long should we let ignorance and falsehood dominate religion?  The Shankaracharya’s teaching is sheer falsehood while the Minister’s reveals ignorance.  Both falsehood and ignorance have played a significant role in religion throughout its history.  Most religious t

One of the fifteen persons facing corruption charges related to coal mining in Jharkhand is a young man who displayed his nationalism and idealism by wearing the Indian national flag on his sleeves.  He took to the Supreme Court his right to display his patriotism by flying the national flag in places he thought appropriate. His patriotism won him a seat in the Parliament too.  Good old humour Superior to New Morality His uncle is a great moralist apart from being an industrialist.  This great uncle recently handed over his school in Delhi to a godman because of reasons related to morality.  A few years earlier the biography of this great uncle was written by his daughter in which the uncle was quoted raising charges of immorality on the staff of the school in question.  The uncle is renowned for enforcing morality – his version of it, of course – using methods which are not often moral by conventional standards. The school was eventually shut down by the godman.  In

“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature,” declared Joseph Campbell, illustrious mythologist.  Myths, rituals, and prayers help in making our heartbeats match the beat of the universe.  It’s about the harmony between oneself and the world outside.  It’s about discovering the meaning of that world in  spite of its apparent harshness, absurdity, and terror.  It’s about discovering the harmony between the self and the universe. Literature has helped me much in the process of discovering that harmony.  Any good work of literature makes me probe the defences I have erected against painful truths about me as well as the world outside me.  Good literature chips away those defences.  Truth is revealed through a alchemical process.  Good literature also has the potential to heal the ruptures caused by the chipping away of the facile inner illusions and self-delusions.  Good literature takes the reader beyond his “in

Rollo May, psychologist, thought of conformity as one of the greatest vices of man.  “The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it’s conformity,” he asserted repeatedly.  You are not fully alive, not even fully human, unless at some point of time you felt that the world around you is wrong and you wanted to scream at it, “This is me and the world be damned.”  Isn’t that what Socrates did?  Isn’t that what Jesus did? People love conformity.  It makes life much easier.  It is easy to swim with the current, to move with the herd, to be a faceless shape in the crowd.  It is not just easy, it is beneficial too.  Trophies belong to those who abide by the rules of the game.  Pain, on the other hand, is the essential companion of the one who chooses to stand out. No one becomes fully human painlessly, Rollo May quoted Dostoevsky.  Pain is what you undergo necessarily when you choose to be what you are rather than what the herd wants you to be.  But why should any

One of the many paradoxes of human life is that people always tell you that the best way for changing the world is to change yourself.  They want you to change yourself.  They won’t ever change themselves.  Moreover, they will meddle with your life so much that you will have to change yourself in some ways at least: otherwise they won’t let you survive. When I changed myself using a software Actually, it’s not that people don’t want you to survive.  They are not really bothered about you at all.  They are bothered about themselves.  You are just a stumbling block in their way.  So they want you to change: move yourself from their way so that they can get on.  Philosopher-writer Jean-Paul Sartre famously said that “Hell is other people.”  Our freedom is curtailed by other people, their demands.  Freedom is all about making choices.  Can I make choices without giving due regard to other people, their likes and dislikes, demands and proclivities...?  Their likes and di

Indispire edition 114 #IAmABlogger inspires the narcissist in me.  Why do I blog?  To feed endless hunger of the narcissist in me, I suppose.  Like Narcissus gazing neurotically at his own image in the water, I decided to gaze into the eyes of my enduring benefactor, Reverend Tormentoro, and extract his view on why I blog. Narcissus  by  Caravaggio , gazing at his own reflection. Source: Wikipedia “You display all the signs of NPD as listed by the DSM,” he said.  NPD elaborates as Narcissistic Personality Disorder for those who are not initiated.  And DSM is the Bible of psychiatrists: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA).  Can anyone be a serious writer unless he/she considers him-/herself important to some degree?  I did not voice my question.  No one dares to question the Rev.  Not if you know him personally. “You still look for appreciation from your readers,” explained the Rev.  “You wan