Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Kerala has been celebrating Onam for years and years as a festival of equality, prosperity, and utopian dreams.  The legend is that the reign of Maveli (Maha Bali) was a utopia.  People were honest.  They respected one another.  Everyone was happy.  Life had a heavenly dignity.  The heavens were unhappy, however.  Gods conspired to put an end to the earthly utopia.  Vamana, an avatar of God Vishnu, encountered Maveli and sent him down to the netherworld (Patala) deceitfully.  Maveli Happy Onam to you  The right wing Hindu organisation, RSS, has come out in defence of the gods.  Onam was originally a celebration of the birthday of Vamana and had nothing to do with Maveli, argues K Unnikrishnan Namboothiri in his article published in the Onam special edition of Kesari , the RSS mouthpiece in Malayalam.   Namboothiri wants to exculpate the gods from their deceitfulness and other venality.  The Maveli legend “is an attempt by some vested interests to distort the mythical st

Handicap is in the mind.  Arunima Sinha is one of the many individuals who have proved that right. When she was 23, Arunima was attacked by thieves in a running train and pushed out.  The train that whizzed past on the next track ran over her leg which was amputated.  The police in Incredible India made a theory that she had tried to commit suicide.  She had to fight the pain of her physical handicap and the more terrible pain of the mental agony thrown in gratuitously by the police. Source Being a sportswoman must have helped her.  She was a volleyball player.  She decided to face the challenges, both physical and mental.  She decided to conquer the Everest with the prosthetic leg that her doctors would provide. A dream and full confidence in yourself.  That’s the secret of success.  She had already conquered the Everest the moment the dream was born inside her because she had the confidence in herself that she could make her dream real. Two years after the acc

Philosopher Schopenhauer was doomed to pessimism by his very circumstances, says Will Durant in his famous book, The Story of Philosophy .  “(A) man who has not known a mother’s love – and worse, has known a mother’s hatred – has no cause to be infatuated with the world,” writes Durant in his inimitable style.  Schopenhauer’s mother was a novelist of some repute.  His father committed suicide when Schopenhauer was 17.  His mother soon took to free love.  She had little love for her husband anyway; she thought of him as too prosaic.  Durant compares Schopenhauer’s dislike of his mother to Hamlet’s attitude to his mother after the death of his father.  Schopenhauer grew up hating women.  “(H)is quarrels with his mother taught him a large part of those half-truths about women,” says Durant.  He despised women as impulsive creatures with no aesthetic sense and totally lacking in intelligence.  He told his mother that she would eventually be known not for her books but for his.  He

The little girl smiled.  Her father noticed it though he was leading her by hand to their car in the parking lot.  He was taking her home after school.  He noticed her smile because he saw the bearded man sitting under a tree with a book in hand smiling at his daughter.  “Who is it?”  Father asked the daughter. “Who?” asked the girl in return. “The man who smiled at you.” “Don’t know.” “Why did you smile at him then?” “Because he smiled.” “Don’t smile at strangers,” he said sternly as he helped her on to the seat. “Why dad?” “Because,” he hesitated.  How is he to explain to a four year-old child why strangers are potential enemies.  “Because, strangers may not be good people.” She looked at him.  Did she expect an explanation?  She had started asking a lot of why’s these days. How can I explain this to you, my daughter?  How can I tell you that most smiles today carry poison?  Invisible poison.  You won’t even understand how smiles can ca

One of the first roses that bloomed in my little garden The following poem was inspired by it.  Why do you look so penitent like Tagore’s flowe r that asked the master to pluck it without delay lest it droop and drop into dust? Aren’t we all made for the dust? You leave me wondering, however, whether it’s the same master that created the night’s worm which seeks out your bed of crimson joy . Isn’t the worm made for the dust too?

Sunday Musings BJP’s Kerala state general secretary, Surenderan, has an opinion that is quite different from that of his party about women’s entry to the Sabarimala temple.  He thinks that Lord Ayappan, the presiding deity at Sabarimala, is not a misogynist though he is a “perpetual celibate.”  But his party was quick to distance itself from the Facebook post of the state general secretary.  The state president, Kummanam Rajasekharan, dismissed the secretary’s view as “personal.” How many compromises can we make between our personal views and those of the organisation or party or system to which we belong religiously? I am an absolute hypocrite when it comes to religion.  I find it impossible to believe anything of what religions teach.  My very being rebels against the teachings much as I acknowledge the inevitable role of delusions and illusions in a normal man’s life.  In spite of the nausea they germinate in me, I participate in certain religious rituals. I partic

“A corpse can be revived,” says Frank Hunter to Andrew Crocker-Harris in Terence Rattigan’s one-act play, The Browning Version . Andrew is a martyr because he refuses to assert himself where required.  He knows that his wife, Millie, is unfaithful to him.  In fact she enjoys taunting him by telling him about her affairs with his colleagues.  Andrew continues to tolerate her because he thinks divorcing her would be “another grave wrong” he would do to her.  What’s the other wrong he had done her?  Frank asks.  “To marry her,” answers Andrew. Andrew and Millie are total mismatches.  Millie is sensuous and earthy.  Andrew is intellectual and ethereal.  “Two kinds of love,” Andrew explains.  “Worlds apart as I know now, though when I married her I didn’t think they were incompatible.”  Andrew wanted affection and companionship, the emotional delights of love.  Millie wanted the physical delights.  Andrew thought that the kind of love he required was superior and never imagined