Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Presenting Anthony Gottlieb’s new book, The Dream of Enlightenment , The New Yorker today raises the question whether we are “ really so modern .”  Modernity is not about science and technology, argues the writer.  “Rather, it is a subjective condition, a feeling or an intuition that we are in some profound sense different from the people who lived before us.”  He goes on to show that we are no different from the people who lived, say, a hundred years ago.  We may have accumulated a lot of new technology and its gifts. But our attitudes haven’t changed.  Aristotle who was born 2400 years ago was more sophisticated in thinking than most people living today.  If Aristotle were to visit us today, he would find us as savage as the people of his days.  He wouldn’t accept our attacking certain people with missiles and bombs in the name of gods and ideologies as a sign of modernity.  He would find it impossible to imagine that certain sections of people are kept away from the mainstr

Kadakampally Surendran, Kerala's Devaswom Board minister, has raised a very serious allegation against the RSS in the state. According to a Facebook post of the minister, the RSS is perpetrating certain illegal activities in some temples.  The minister claims that RSS is plotting to convert the temples into storehouses for arms and ammunition. It is a very serious allegation.  Both the RSS and the minister's party [CPM] are at loggerheads with each other.  Both have attacked each other violently leading to many deaths in the past. If the RSS is converting temples into arms stores, the situation needs immediate action. In the last two years the right wing in the country has become more violent than ever.  There have been attacks on many people belonging to minority communities in different parts of the country.  Even the Dalits are not spared by certain activists. Kerala is a state with a high non-Hindu population. Communal riots can become conflagrations quickly.  Hen

Courtesy: The Indian Express Thanks to the media, a Dana Majhi or a Salamani Behera makes a brief appearance in the history of the country.  Who are they?  We will ask that question tomorrow.  We will forget them.  Because they don’t belong in history.  It was merely a freak chance that put them there.  Dana Majhi entered by carrying the dead body of his wife on his shoulders for a distance of over 10 km.  With his teenage daughter walking beside suppressing her grief.  The picture would shake the conscience of anyone who has a conscience.  Salamani Behera was an 80 year-old woman whose dead body was broken at the hip in order to fold it into two so that it could be packed and carried on a bamboo pole.  How much is a human being worth in this country whose Prime Minister is hopping on and off airplanes in order to carry the greatness of his nation far and wide? History always belonged to the rulers and their minions.  Pick up any history book and we will read about ki

Long ago, when I was young and more foolish than most of my contemporaries who were worldly wise, my godfather told me that I was a narcissist.  I possessed all the characteristics of a person suffering from the narcissistic personality disorder, he said.  Then he read out the list of my personality disorders from a diary. 1.      You have an exaggerated sense of self-importance. 2.      You expect to be recognised as superior even though you have achieved nothing worthwhile 3.      You exaggerate whatever little you manage to achieve. 4.      You are often in your own dream world, fantasies about... Then he stopped and looked at me.  “Am I correct this far?” he asked.  I nodded my head like a penitent at the confessional. “... fantasies about success, power, intellectual brilliance...”  He paused and stared into my eyes again.  “Are you with me?” “Bound to you with a chain,” I wished to say.  But I was trained to listen quietly when  the ‘personal scrutiny’ w

The politicians of Haryana are vying with one another, irrespective of their party allegiances, to claim the credit for Sakshi Malik’s Olympic medal .  That’s the major advantage of being a winner.  When you laugh, the world laughs with you; when you cry, the world sneaks away in search of the next winner.  Politicians, being the direct descendants of bloodsucking leeches, will be the first ones to do that.  The chelas will follow loyally. And the whole world will applaud them along with the winner. Never be a loser.  That’s the lesson, in short.  Otherwise, like L K Advani or Murli Manohar Joshi you get thrown out of the bandwagon even if you were its charioteer in your heyday.  The world is as eager to forget the loser as it is to applaud the winner.  Personally, winning or losing matters little to me.  I am a born loser.  There is no period in my life which I see as a winning phase.  There was always a winner eager to snatch my trophies.  I grew used to the process

Samuel Johnson was wrong.  Far from being scoundrels, we, the Indian patriots, are an exceptionally sensitive lot.  “As sensitive as the toilet seat,” I can hear the antinational prigs snicker.  The fact is that we care for Mother India.  We care for the Gau Mata.  That’s why we don’t tolerate the likes of Ramya, former MP and actress, who dare to say that “Pakistan is not hell.”  Tell me, how can a former Member of Parliament, make such a statement when she ought to know that the cause of all our problems is Pakistan?  Earlier that other actor’s wife said she felt insecure to live in India.  We told her to go to Pakistan along with her Muslim husband.  And now we have slapped a sedition charge on Ramya.  We are patriots, not scoundrels.  Our national sensitivity is offended when anyone says that Pakistan is not hell.  Our national pride is founded on the premise that Pakistan is our hell. For light to shine, there has to be darkness.  Pakistan is our darkness.  India is heaven

“I expect you to be sincere and as an honourable man never to utter a single word that you don't really mean.”   Alceste, the protagonist of Moliere’s comedy, The Misanthrope , utters these words in the opening scene of the play.  Alceste wanted a world of genuine people.  His desire was not as demanding as that of Jesus or the Buddha.  Yet Alceste became a comic character in the society while Jesus and the Buddha became gods. Source Alceste lived in the 17 th century when the world was more complex than when Jesus demanded childlike innocence as the price of the ticket to heaven.  The Buddha had found it even more impossible to accept life’s absurdity than Jesus, let alone Alceste.  The Buddha sought deliverance in the nonexistence of nirvana while Jesus nailed his body’s abominable passions to the cross and thus delivered his soul from those passions. Moliere’s Alceste is more human than these gods.  He eventually accepted the limitations of human nature.  None o