Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Courtesy: Lawlex Just ten days from the elections in Kerala, I’m left wondering who to vote for.  The UDF government that ruled the state for the last five years has almost ruined the state.  Scams and scandals haunted the government throughout its reign.  It appears that every Congressman in the state is either a money-guzzler or an accomplice of some swindler.  When the Opposition leader, nonagenarian V S Achuthanandan, alleged that there were many charges against the Chief Minister, Mr Oommen Chandy filed a defamation case for a damage of Rs 1 lakh.  Mr Chandy’s reputation cannot be very precious when the wily man had refused to file any defamation charge against Saritha Nair who went on hurling all sorts of allegations against him.  There seem to be very few Congressmen left in Kerala whose otherwise immaculately white, perfectly starched, khadi shirts are not tainted with variegated stains of corruption.  There are a few who are not corrupt in the traditional sense.  But t

The word became flesh And the flesh was nailed to the cross In a religious ritual On a mount called Calvary. Crucifixion became a ritual.  “Hey Ram!” Called out the flesh that was nailed again and again by owners of The Truth. The cry became the ritual.  “Shed the skin like a snake And regain your new self,” said the Buddha. Becoming snake became a ritual.  PS. Written for Indispire Edition 115 which had already extracted a post from me: Matching Heartbeats .  I'm obliged to write one more post on the theme by the latest posts at Indiblogger.  This is my response to some of the posts which I did not endorse at Indiblogger. #rituals

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