Tomichan Matheikal's blog

The young man who perpetrated the mass murder in an Orlando nightclub is a typical symbol of the contemporary religious zealot.  He is not much different from some of the godmen and their cults in India. The cult that let loose its sanctimonious insanity on the Mathura police recently are also imagining itself as the Messiah of India. Religious people who perceive themselves as holier than the others are the greatest threat to contemporary civilisation.  All sorts of terrorism - overt as well as covert - emerge from that infantile self-image.  The phenomenon is nothing new.  It has marked most religions right from the beginning of human history. Can we not save ourselves from these holy murderers?  Can they be successful without our cooperation? 

We are what we pretend to be. What's it that prevents us From not pretending?

Mini story "Shoot me between the eyes." Rajmohan asked anyone who spoke to him in metaphors.  Truth is as terse and straight as a mathematical equation or a scientific principle and it doesn't need the crutches of metaphors. That was his religion. But he had never imagined anyone would take his own metaphor literally and fire a bullet directly into his forehead. Mr Pandit and Mr Sharma had approached him for a donation.  The trust established by their godman was constructing the largest temple in the world. (On land grabbed from a reserved forest.) "Why do we need temples?" Rajmohan asked them.  "Spend your money on a hospital or school for the poor people who can't afford good treatment or good education." "God's glory requires temples, bhaiyya,"said Mr Pandit. The Godman's men used all the poetry they knew to explain god and his glory. God became a flower in the valley or milk in the udder or even the slit in the pa

Today (June 8) is the death anniversary of Gerard Manley Hopkins [1844-1889], a British poet whose greatness lay buried beneath the smokescreens of Victorian sensibilities.  Spring and Fall is one of his many exquisite poems.  It is addressed to a little girl, Margaret, who is sad seeing the leaves fall in the season of autumn.  Are you crying over the falling leaves, Margaret?  The poet asks the girl.  A time will come when you won’t weep over the falling leaves because life will teach you about other much more significant falls.  Fall is the blight man was born for, says the poet.  O little girl, how innocent you are!  Your innocence is the beauty of the spring season with its fresh life and enchanting beauty.  Spring is the promise of new life.  Dreams bloom on the twigs.  You are one of those numerous dreams.  But you are destined to realise that autumn will follow soon.  The leaves and blooms will all fall.  That’s their inevitable destiny.  Life will teach you

The easiest way to earn fabulous wealth in India today is religion.  There are quite a few godmen and ammas who have amassed more wealth than the Ambanis and Adanis by selling gods to people. What happened in Mathura yesterday should open the eyes of both the people and the authorities.  The followers of one Baba Jai Gurudev illegally occupied 280 acres and used violence when the police tried to evict them.  The ‘religious’ people used swords, knives, guns, grenades and even automatic weapons. Exemplary cooperation between a Baba and his Government The Baba who died in 2012 (at the age of 116 as claimed by his followers) started off his divine career making the fraudulent claim that he was Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.  That was in 1975 when people were not as willing as they apparently are today to be hoodwinked.  The Baba’s fraud was greeted with a shower of slippers, rotten eggs and tomatoes.  But Babas being some of the most ingenious people, they always find a way

The earth was parched and it longed for love.  Nothing can heal the cracks in the soul as love can.  Everything that has life comes in pairs, reflected the earth.  Man has woman.  The animals have their mates.  Even the plants have their mates. Male and female.  And the love that binds them.  What’s life without that bond?  The earth longed for a loving touch.  It had been violated for millennia.  Civilisations came and went violating her pristine innocence.  Violation has been her destiny ever since the ape descended from the tree and started walking on two legs.  Did I not love you?  The rainclouds that gathered in the heavens asked her.  Did I not love you from the time you were born?  The earth smiled.  Her smile was warped.  But she nodded her ascent.  The cracks in her soul were filled with longing.  The clouds smiled.  When someone longs for you, you have reasons to smile.  What’s life without that longing? The rain descended from the heavens consummating

We live in a world which continues to lay undue emphasis on certain traditions, especially those which have their roots in religion.  Religion being regressive by nature, its traditions will continue to be in force even when the world will have evolved far beyond them scientifically and technologically. Most religious traditions are like the gargoyles erected on magnificent edifices: they may serve some supposed purposes hideous as they appear. A still from the movie Tevye, the protagonist of the movie Fiddler on the Roof , faces the painful dilemma of having to make a choice between tradition and love.  Three of his nubile daughters break the sacred traditions of their religion by falling in love with men of their choice.  Tevye is shocked and infuriated each time.  He asks his God, Yahweh, what to do.  In doing so, he is breaking a sacred tradition himself: he is unseating the Rabbi from his sacred position as the mediator between Yahweh and his creature. The hotline