Tomichan Matheikal's blog

After reading a blog post of mine ( Legal Lawbreakers ), an ex-colleague of mine sent me a message yesterday that the criminals would be punished by God.  She has absolute faith in her God, she wrote.  Is there any justification for such faith?  Nowhere in the history of mankind do we get any reason to believe that divine intervention has awarded justice to any people at any time.  On the contrary, we have infinite examples to show how the wicked flourish and the naive perish.  It is easy to delude ourselves with such beliefs as divine justice after death.  Hell and heaven, the Judgment Day, Karmic consequences, and other such religious carrots-and-sticks don’t serve any purpose to make human life more equitable on the planet.  Religions also offer believers ways to circumvent the stick and secure the carrot: a confession or a bath in the Ganga or some other ritual can wash away your sins.  If religion were indeed effective in helping people resist evil with the carro

“Writing is a dog’s life, but the only life worth living,” said Flaubert. A meticulous writer whose novels became classics though he was, Flaubert died penniless.  Many great writers lived rather miserable lives because writing was not a very remunerative job in those days.  There were many artists too who lived in utter poverty though after their death their paintings were sold for sums which they could never have imagined in life.  Is it because they never worked for money that their works had such profundity?  Does money contaminate everything it touches? There is no money in blogging anyway.  At least, not anything significant.  Flaubert and Dostoevsky could accept the agony of pennilessness because they were in search of something much more meaningful than money.  It is their search for meaning that made their writing profound.  And that search, the search for meaning, is an endless search. Why don’t we find such deep writing today?  The best writers of our times

This post is written for Indispire Edition 118: #Values .  It is specifically about three “immensely necessary skilful values” that the emerging generation should possess. 1. Thinking Skills Serious thinking seems to have gone to some shopping mall and got lost there.  It must be fiddling with the keypad of some smartphone trying to send its selfie picture to everybody in the contact list on half a dozen social network sites where egos go on rollercoaster rides at breakneck speeds. Let it come back home and sit down coolly with a copy of Will Durant’s Story of Philosophy or  Jennifer Michael Hecht’s Doubt: a history .  Let it hobnob with the insane Nietzsche and the statesmanly Jefferson.  Let it discover the bloom that blushes in the desert for no one in particular.  Let it bathe in the springs of classical literature.  Let it learn to listen to the symphony of the planets.  2. Scientific Temper There are a lot of scientists all around.  IT professiona

Kerala does not have the tradition of re-electing a government.  So yesterday’s poll results would not have surprised anybody.  Moreover, the UDF government was steeped in corruption charges.  Kerala Results in a nutshell Yet the Pala constituency re-elected K. M. Mani who faced serious allegations related to the bar scam.  The people of Pala are neither ignorant politically nor blind in their allegiance to Mr Mani.  Mani has done much for the people of his constituency.  He has intimate relationships with the Catholic church which is a strong force in Pala.  People benefit one way or another if Mani is in power.  That is the secret of Mani’s success.  It has nothing to do with any ideology. P. C. George who rebelled furiously against Mani’s corruption and became an enemy of both the UDF and the LDF because of his undiplomatic forthrightness and bravado won as an independent candidate from Poonjar, Mani’s neighbouring constituency.  George’s victory indicates that wha

Derry is an adolescent boy who sees himself as a failure in life because of a huge scar on his face.  He looks hideous to himself whenever he looks in a mirror.  He thinks that he is unlovable.    People stare at him because of the scar.  He has heard people make remarks about the scar.  “Only a mother can love such a face,” he heard a woman say once.  But even his mother cannot apparently accept the scar; she kisses him on the side of his face which is normal.  Derry hides himself from people because of that hideous scar.  Courtesy: NCERT English textbook, class 12 One day he meets an elderly man called Lamb.  Mr Lamb tells him to rewrite his life story.  You have everything that a normal person has: two legs, two hands, etc.  Mr Lamb tells Derry.  Just like any other normal person, you can be a success if you change your perspective: the way you view the scar.  Accept the scar on your face and learn to ignore other people’s remarks about it.  And go about doing your job.

In Amitav Ghosh’s novel, Sea of Poppies (which I reviewed yesterday ), there is a very interesting character named Paulette Lambert.  Her father is a scientist who does not believe in God and religion.  He brought up his daughter “in the innocent tranquillity of the Botanical Gardens.”  He did not allow her soul to be corrupted by religion and God.  The only altar at which she worshipped was that of Nature.  The trees were her scripture and the earth her revelation.  “She has not known anything but Love, Equality and Freedom,” her dying father tells another character from whom he seeks the favour of taking her out of the British colony.  “If she remains here, in the colonies,” he says, “most particularly in a city like this (Calcutta), where Europe hides its shame and its greed, all that awaits her is degradation: the whites of this town will tear her apart, like vultures and foxes, fighting over a corpse.  She will be an innocent thrown before the money-changers who pass themselv

Book Review “The truth is, sir, that men do what their power permits them to do. We are no different from the Pharaohs or the Mongols: the difference is only that when we kill people we feel compelled to pretend that it is for some higher cause.  It is this pretence of virtue, I promise you, that will never be forgiven by history.” Captain Chillingworth of the ship Ibis utters those words in Amitav Ghosh’s novel, Sea of Poppies .  The novel is about power and how different people wield it over others as much as it is about the powerless who are destined to suffer the oppressions.  The novel presents a part of the India in the 1830s.  The British have become very powerful in India and they control the trade too.   As Benjamin Burnham, one of the traders in the novel, says, trade indicates the “march of human freedom.”  Even slave trade is part of that glorious march.  According to Burnham, the white man gave freedom to the African slaves from “the rule of some dark tyra