Tomichan Matheikal's blog

The accompanying health capsule in today’s Times of India made me smile. I was having breakfast when my eyes fell on the capsule.  The tea in my cup whitened with milk powder sparkled with an unusual mirth.  Ever since I left Delhi last year, I never bought milk to whiten my tea.  I could never come to terms with the taste of actual milk though I was forced to drink it at my Delhi school whose breakfast had milk on its menu.  I drank quarter of a tumbler for the sake of a belly that longed for some warm liquid. Many people in Delhi (and its neighbouring states, I understand) consider milk and milk products as the ultimate secret of good health.  I used to buy Mother Dairy’s “toned milk” to whiten my evening cuppa as long as I was in Delhi.  Everybody who saw me carrying home that plastic pouch advised me to switch to the actual stuff available hot from the udder provided I was willing to take an early morning walk to the neighbouring village. They wouldn’t believe me when I

His hobby was watching spiders chase flies. Spiders wove their webs and waited. Sooner than later some fly was sure to be trapped in the treacherously gossamer web. There’s a preordained affinity between flies and spider webs, he thought as he watched the spider rush with the glee of a conqueror to devour the trapped fly. ‘I’m like this fly,’ he muttered to himself. His religion was the spider web and its priests were the spiders. The Lords of the Ma’amad, having known of the evil opinions and acts of Baruch de Spinoza, have endeavoured by various means and promises, to turn him from his evil ways... (1632-1677) He remembered the verdict passed on him by the Ma’amad, the Council of Elders, when he was just 23 years old. His crime was that he had questioned their truths. Their truths were falsehoods for him. Their truths were illusions. Their truths were fabricated gossamer webs. He showed them the real truths. Truths, naked and unembellished, which would set them fr

A relatively new trend that is gaining much popularity in the Indian online journalistic media is the posting of vituperative comments anonymously.  Most such comments are overtly communal in nature and support or attack a particular religion.  If these comments are analysed in sufficient detail, we may suspect that there are paid writers who post comments for the sake of defending a particular party and its religious ideology.  Some comments by one 'Ram' in the Indian Express Hitler and his Nazis made use of similar strategies for propaganda.  Some of the most effective strategies used by the present dominant ideology in India which considers certain animals more sacred than human beings are very similar to those employed by the Nazis. For example: Posters and slogans, Anti-Semitism/antinationalism, Use of the mass media for propagating distorted truths, Mythologising the political party and its history, Projection of one individual as the only efficient leader.