Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Civilisation is an attitude.  It is a sophistication of the mind.  Very few people acquire such sophistication.  The vast majority remain as barbarian as the ancient savage was.  There may be one difference, however. While the ancient savages inflicted physical violence on real enemies, today’s savages tend to assault the individual’s self-confidence psychologically projecting the individual as a perceived enemy.  Physical violence has not vanished altogether.  Most terrorist attacks are physical annihilations.  Attacks on the Dalits and Muslims in India by the so-called vigilantes are often both physical and psychological.  Tying up people and lashing their buttocks before a crowd is more a psychological attack than physical. So is urinating on someone’s face or forcing someone to eat cow-dung.      PM Modi has publicly admitted that 4 out of 5 of these vigilantes are criminals taking advantage of the situation.  RSS has taken exception to the PM’s statistics.  It may be

Roads hold out fascinating promises. They beckon us to the mystery that lies beyond the bend.  Here are some of those roads that added charm to some of my best years. All the pictures are from South Delhi. I rode a two-wheeler on these roads for many years humming to myself John Denver’s famous lines: “Country roads, take me home / To the place I belong.”  Not that I wanted to belong anywhere particularly.  Not that I was philosophical enough to suffer from rootlessness.  Rootlessness is the natural destiny of anyone who is delighted by roads even if he is not a Diogenes. Roads promise to lead you to somewhere beyond the horizon that circumscribes you.  That’s the charm of roads.  Hope is what roads are composed of.  Hope is an illusion insofar as it lies beyond the horizon.  What is life without those beloved illusions?  I love Mark Twain's dictum: "Don't part with your illusions.  When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live." A v

I salute Mr Modi for his latest speeches.   On Saturday, he lambasted the gau rakshaks in no uncertain terms.   He called them anti-socials who are trying to masquerade their maleficence with feigned religiousness.   He has appealed to the state governments to take stern action against such criminals. Today addressing a rally in Hyderabad, he said, “If you want to attack, attack me and not Dalits. If you want to shoot, shoot me and not Dalits.”  Better late than never.  The PM should have spoken out long ago when certain sections of the country’s population or their religious places were attacked right from the time he took over the highest political authority in the country.   The PM should have spoken out when Kalburgi, Dabholkar and Pansare were murdered brutally for supporting the causes of secularism.  Not even the protests from eminent writers of the country who returned their Sahitya Akademi awards provoked the PM into taking the issue seriously.  Rohith Ve

It is when I actually constructed a house for myself that I learnt how I could have made a better house at less cost.  It is when I reach the autumn of life that I learn how richer life would have been had I made different choices.  But neither can be undone.  The construction of a house is a one-time accomplishment.  At least, one’s life is a one-time affair.  There’s no going back. Life is a cruel game of the gods if they exist.  Christopher McDougall’s gazelle and lion that wake up every morning in an African forest and start running for survival are poignant symbols of that cruel game.  The graceful gazelle has to run in order to save its life from the feral lion.  And the lion has to run and capture the gazelle for its own survival.  The conqueror and the vanquished keep running in the wicked game of life.  Could I have chosen to stand out of that game and watch?  Even that wouldn’t save me because I wouldn’t be able to bear the heartlessness of that game beyon

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.