Tomichan Matheikal's blog

It was the autumn of 2004.  Along with a few colleagues including my wife, I went on my first trekking in the Garhwal Himalayas. The school where we worked gave us that opportunity.  We took a group of higher secondary students to Hemkund. Walking up 14,200 feet (4320 metres)in the Devabhoomi on the Himalayas is a soul-stirring experience.  A cosy bus carried us from Delhi to Joshimath (a little less than 500 km) via Rishikesh and Rudraprayag.  The journey from Joshimath to Govind Ghat (22 km) is also by bus but it was breathtaking journey for us.  The road was very narrow and the sides were steep in most places.  I don’t know the present situation.  There were moments which made us gasp in anxiety. With Margret, my wife, at Govind Ghat The beginning of the Trek The trek begins from Govind Ghat.  Tighten your backpack and get going.  It’s a whole day’s climb to Ghangaria depending on the climbing power in your muscles as well as your will.  You breathe in the beau

I wake up every morning to some WhatsApp messages from friends and well-wishers.  “There are only two ways of living life,” suggested one such message this morning, “Walk like you are the King or walk like you don’t care who the King is.”  The very next one from another friend (who messages me very rarely) belonged to the spiritual realms as usual: “In pride, in reas’ning pride, our error lies; All quit their sphere and rush into the skies. Pride still is aiming at the bless’d abodes, Men would be angels, angels would be gods.” The first message came from a friend who has entrepreneurial ambitions while the sender of the second one has spiritual aspirations. The first friend, presumably, sends bulk messages to all in the mailing list every morning and hence the messages may not be meant for me personally.  The second friend takes a personal interest in me as all spiritually ambitious people do.  Entrepreneurship is about managing the masses while spirituality is about savin

“It is God’s omniscience that helps Him to endure the sorrows of the world,” says the narrator of Francois Mauriac’s short story, A Man of Letters.   Why would any God endure this world of ours for so long had it not been for the empathetic understanding of the criminality that underlies the crown of His own creation?  The question begs a lot of other questions, of course.  Is there a God, did He (is it He really?) create the universe, was He aware of the evil that he was giving birth to while creating the human beings...?  Michelangelo's The Pieta Let us assume that some God created the universe for reasons similar to why Dostoevsky wrote Crime and Punishment or Michelangelo carved the Pieta : a creative urge.  Not the whole of creation is under the control of the creator because there are unconscious motives which underlie every creation.  Sublimation of the darkness within the creator is one of the motives of creation. The human beings seem to be the darkness that la

Book Review Title: Silent Realities Author: Ranjan Kaul Publisher: Niyogi Books, New Delhi, 2016 Pages: 214 It is not an easy job to fabricate arresting stories out of very ordinary characters.  The best feature of Ranjan Kaul’s short stories is that they engage us from the first line to the last.  We get glued to the characters.  There’s a rare kind of suspense that Kaul creates in his stories.  It is not the suspense we find in thrillers and other categories that usually make use of suspense.  It is rather the suspense that life carries inextricably with it particularly in the case of vulnerable characters. The reason why Kaul’s stories fascinate us is that the characters are all taken from the next street or the next door.  Ashalata who makes use of her little daughter to steal ladies’ handbags in the first story, The Handbag , Lallan who becomes a tragic victim of a corrupt and insensitive socio-political system [ Lallan ]and Hari who runs away from home beca

Mr Narendra Modi has come a long way from the Gujarat of 2002.  The real war is a psychological one, he has learnt.  It is very easy to rouse up the rabble and set ablaze anything.  Rousing up people’s imagination is the tough job.  A real leader’s task is precisely that.  And that’s what Mr Modi did in Kerala yesterday. Look at what he said in Kerala yesterday.  India will not forget Uri.  Mr Modi knows as well as Mark Antony that public memory is like the thistledown caught in the wind.  And Mr Modi is as good an orator as Mark Antony.  He knows how to win over hearts just like the Roman conqueror.  “When we think of Kerala, we think of God’s Own Country, it has an impression of purity and holiness,” he said to the cheering crowd.  “When I visited gulf countries recently, I wanted to meet my people from Kerala living there.” He knows that Kerala’s economy is sustained by the Malayalis working in those desert sands.  “ Kerala ke karyartaon ko vishwas dilata hoon ki aapki tap

If I am asked to invite some “celebrities” to a dinner at my dining table, who would those “celebrities” be? At the outset, let me clarify that this is a purely hypothetical and fictitious approach to the latest theme proposed by Indispire .   The first three names that come to my mind are Arnab Goswami, Narendra Modi and Gurinder Singh Dhillon .  The last may need an introduction.  Mr Dhillon is the godman who controls quite a few empires led by a cult named Radha Soami Satsang Beas .  He is arguably the richest Indian if the wealth possessed by his cult in India alone (let alone those abroad) is reckoned.  He is worshipped as a god by a few million people in the country though he shies away from publicity of the sort I am giving him free of charge.  He is a celebrity though the Indian media has not discovered him yet except in a rare report like this . Mr Modi with his political acumen and Mr Dhillon with his godman skills can work out some divine miracles or at lea

Aerial view of Sydney If you are planning to study abroad, there is no better destination than Sydney, Australia. Sydney is an iconic city and an ideal place for students to come and study from various parts of the world. Every, year more than 35,000 students from over 50 countries pursue their dreams in various top class educational institutions in the city. Sydney also has a long history of providing students with multiple opportunities to hone their varied skills. The greatest advantage, particularly for the Indian students,is the temperate climate of the city with warm summers and mild winters. The breathtaking beaches and the stunning landscapes of the city will keep your mind fresh and invigorated to acquire knowledge to the fullest of your potential.  Sydney Opera House, Beaches, the Rocks, Sydney Harbor Bridge, Sydney Harbor, Paddy’s Markets, Darling Harbour, the Blue Mountains and many more breathtaking sites can be ideal places for students to spend their leisure