Tomichan Matheikal's blog

We become like our enemies. The Sangh Parivar is proving the saying right if the latest issue of Outlook is to be believed.  The Parivar which never tired of accusing the Christian missionaries and the Islamic fundamentalists of converting people into their respective religions is now indulging in the same activity much more ruthlessly and heartlessly, according to the Outlook cover story.  Children between the age of 5 and 12 are weaned away from their parents under fraudulent promises and with fake documents and taken to institutions in Gujarat and Punjab.  Most of the children belong to various tribes in Assam and other North-eastern states.  According to the Outlook reports which quote official sources, about 5000 children were taken away from Assam alone in 2012-15.  These and other similar children from other states are sent to the various institutions run by Sewa Bharati which was set up in 1978 by Balasaheb Deoras with the purported goal of promoting the welfare

The three girls grew up together right from primary school.  They studied in the same school and lived in the same premises.  When schooling was completed, they went to different colleges.  But they met every evening for some time in an open area near their homes.  They would sit together and chat while their fingers moved dexterously on the keypad of their smartphone.  The occasional giggle or  peel of laughter that was let out did not considerably affect their engagement with the phone.  Now that they live in different places, the relationships must have turned entirely virtual, I guess.  In the same city, I have noticed people, especially those not old enough to dye their hair, engrossed totally with their mobile phones while travelling in the metro trains or buses, while talking to people in various places, or even while looking after a patient in a hospital.   I wouldn’t be surprised to see someone posing for a selfie with the dead body of his/her grandfather or an aun

Conduct a survey on what people want and you may be surprised to find that god(s) don’t figure in the list of choices.  People don’t want god(s). They want: 1.      Happiness 2.      Money 3.      Freedom 4.      Peace 5.      Joy 6.      Balance 7.      Fulfilment 8.      Confidence 9.      Stability 10.             Passion This is a list of things that people want, in that order of priorities, according to a survey conducted by Kathy Caprino, a leadership trainer and apparently a feminist, and whose results have been published here . The choices may change if a similar survey is conducted in India.  Food, house, clothes, and other basic necessities like toilets may figure in the list in Indian surveys.  I’m sure god(s) won’t.  Conduct the survey in China (most populated country) or Pakistan (apparently most religious country) or Qatar (the wealthiest country currently) and you will still get similar results. God(s) won’t figure in people’s choices.

In the beginning were bacteria. They were bored. Millions of years of life will bore anyone. Even bacteria. They wanted escape from boredom. In spite of volcanic eruptions and other entertainments. In spite tectonic plates shifting whimsically. In spite of falling comets and asteroids. Boredom is the most powerful agent of change. It can kill you. Or it can make you create new life. New life came. In various forms. Plants. They were bored soon. They longed to meet mate. And the mate was born. Dinosaurs. They found it difficult to mate. Snakes crawled around and cockroaches flew around.  Some mated. Some devoured some others. The lion came claiming kingship. The lion was soon bored. The ape came mocking his boredom and running around on trees that the lion could not climb after mating and eating or eating and mating. When the lion was insulted enough into genetic humiliation, the ape descended from the tree and became man. Man was bored sooner than all others. In spite o

Is it possible for anyone to shed the ‘baggage’ of the past and turn a clean, new leaf in life? A few years back, some eminent psychologists studied this and came to the conclusion that our ability to envision the future is strongly influenced by our memory of the past. In other words, we tend to use memories of past experiences to predict what our life will be like in the future. Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist who won the Nobel Prize for his contribution to the field of behavioural economics, uses an example to illustrate how our memories shape our thoughts and feelings. A person had dinner at a restaurant. Everything went well. The food was delicious, the wine wonderful. Memorable dinner. You would recommend the restaurant to anyone. Just then something goes wrong. The waiter spills some coffee on your elegant suit. Odds are that the coffee spill will taint your memory of the food and the wine. What lingers on is memory rather than experience, argues the psychologist. Fu

One of the paradoxes of human life is that society corrupts but isolation destroys.  While critiquing Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness , J H Stape points out a number of related paradoxes.  Civilisation is a hypocritical veneer over savagery; yet it is a valuable achievement to be vigilantly guarded. Morality is a sham; but without it human beings become sham humans. Awareness is superior to ignorance; yet ignorance can be bliss in many ways. A person who sells his soul does at least have a soul to sell, while most people who try to redeem their souls through quotidian religious practices do not have a soul at all.   The latest Indispire theme [ Human beings need someone in their life. At least a person to ask occasionally, how one feels now. What's your say on it? ] brought to my mind these paradoxes. The theme is essentially about relationships. It can be rephrased as: Can we live alone? Do we need at least one companion? Hermits live alone. However, their god(s) an

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of all?” The Queen stood before the mirror and asked as usual.  The response was also the usual one: “My Queen, you are the fairest one of all.” The Queen was never tired of this exercise which went on ad infinitum, ad nauseam.  But the nausea was mine.  Only mine. The Queen, like most people, relished the flattery mistaking it for truth. “You accuse me wrongly,” complained the Mirror. No, it was not a complaint really. I took it as a complaint because I, like most people, judge others according to my own nature. I have a tendency to complain and so I think others also are like that. But the Mirror is not like me. It merely makes statements and not opinions stained by emotions. It tells the truth, in simple words. I don’t tell too many truths, like most people. But unlike most people, I can’t flatter. When I see something unfair or unjust I am tempted to point it out though I, like most people, learnt that it was wise not to t