Tomichan Matheikal's blog

All of us carry a lot of stories within us.  Quite many people just bury them and get on with life which is an exacting dictator.  They get used to the endless agonies and the intermittent ecstasies.  Some offer the stories to their gods and derive the much needed solace.  A few with irresistible egos choose to write them.  I belong to that tribe of egotists who think that their stories have some relevance for others too. That’s why I chose to publish a collection of my short stories, The Nomad Learns Morality .  The book had some good reviews from fellow bloggers.  Let me take the liberty to quote a few of them. “... every story hits your mind hard and impels you to replay it all over again in your mind to join the dots of deeper meaning held within,” says Namrata Kumari , author of Change Your Beliefs to Change Your Reality . An old friend (“old” merely because I hardly have contacts with people now) who works with a national newspaper once told me that I was a perver

One of the flames that fluttered on our terrace in Delhi in a Diwali night It’s only when the greetings came via Whatsapp that I realised it was Diwali.  Saturday is a holiday anyway and I used it for completing the works set aside for the day as usual.  The work took me to two towns on either side of my village.  There was nothing in either of the towns to remind one of Diwali.  It was business as usual.  Not even an extra lamp was seen anywhere.  No diyas which were ubiquitous in Delhi where I lived a decade and a half before I chose the quietness of this village.  No crackers which the Delhiites insisted on calling ‘bombs’ – “bum,” in fact.   No, I don’t miss the diyas or the bums . I like this quietness.  I love the purity that wafts into my lungs.  I used to conceal myself at home during both Diwali and Holi while I was in Delhi.  Both these festivals are conspicuous by their absence in Kerala except maybe in the big cities where people from other states celebrate them

“Zero was one of the greatest inventions in human history,” I remember one of my mathematics teachers telling us at St Albert’s college, Ernakulam.  Without zero we would have reached nowhere beyond some letters like X and M and C which were employed gratuitously in the Roman arithmetic.  Zero simplified and complexified mathematics at once.  It made easy not only counting but also all mathematical operations such as multiplication and division.  Just imagine division, for example, in the Roman system.  MMXLVI divided by IXCMXXXIII.  Wow, that is 1946 divided by 9933, after the invention of zero.  And the answer is 0.19591261451.  Imagine that figure in the Roman numerals.  Your imagination would go bust.  There was no decimal system before the arrival of the great zero. Take any number.  Say 20.  20 ÷ 20 = 1. 20 ÷ 10 = 2.  20 ÷ 4 = 5.  The smaller the divisor, the greater the quotient.  Take a big divisor like, say, 10000.  20 ÷ 10000 = 0.002.  Now apply this logic: as t

Video Review Rick Alan Ross is a cult  specialist, and founder and executive director of the nonprofit Cult Education Institute .  His website provides extensive information on cults and how they manipulate people's minds and emotions.  Here's a link to a video in which he introduces himself and his work.   https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=W7t8XV_rEbs In this video he tells us about the work he does in order to "deprogram" people who have been brainwashed by cults in various countries.   Rick Ross Ross identifies three criteria by which we can identify a disruptive cult. an authoritarian leader who has become an object of worship brainwashing of the followers the damage done to the followers - exploitation for money, sex, etc.  Ross has been working with victims of cults from 1982.  He deprograms the victims by fostering critical thinking in them.  The video is an introduction to him and his work.  Those who are interested in cults an

Shahid's wedding reception Photo sent by my student When a former student of mine who is now a journalist sent me a photo of Shahid Kapoor and his wife with a lady who was my boss for a brief (and worthy of being forgotten) period of my life, what struck me was a necklace.  “That’s the religious asceticism they preached to us,” I wrote in my response to my student. I was aware of the glaring contradictions between the preaching and the practice of the religious cult to which the lady belonged.  In fact, I was one of the many victims of that barefaced disparity.  But what was Shahid Kapoor doing with her or she with him?  I googled and got the answer.  Google is a far greater miracle than any Satsang Guru! Source Shahid Kapoor is a devotee of the cult to which my former boss belonged.  In fact, his marriage was apparently arranged by the Guru .  India Today reported last month that the thespian had not yet named their child because the globe-trotting multi-bill

“The Shiv Sena does not have a theory, and it is impossible for an organization to survive sans a theory,” said the veteran communist leader S A Dange while addressing a Sena meeting in 1984 at the invitation of none other than the founder of the organisation Bal Thackeray.  Shiv Sena “survived, flourished, because of a lack of theory,” wrote Suketu Mehta two decades later in his brilliant book on Thackeray’s city .  The Sena “always hitched a ride aboard the theory of the day: anti-communism, fascism, socialism, anti-immigrant and, now, anti-Muslim, pro-Hindu,” wrote Mehta. Raj Thackeray inherited his uncle’s bizarrely opportunistic genes.  His latest antic is to get Karan Johar to donate Rs 5 crore to the Army welfare fund for having produced a movie with a Pakistani actor in it.  Indian army was quick to distance itself from such political drama.  Mercifully, the army is still led by sensible people especially after General V K Singh left it and took upon the BJP mantle.

Anyone who displays certain qualities which set him apart from the run of the mill may be broadly described as a hero.  For example, a man who has the courage or compassion to jump into a dangerous river in order to save a drowning person is a hero.  A person with certain talents may be considered as a hero by some.  Thus an actor or a sportsperson or a writer may be a hero for some.  Nowadays heroism has become so prosaic, thanks to the likes of Forbes magazine, that wealth can create heroes.  Maybe, the heroism of the wealthiest people lies in their ability to create wealth rather than in being wealthy per se. Philosophically, can we define certain essential qualities of a hero?  I think there’s no harm in making such a list. So here it goes. Heroes are usually on a quest .  The target of the quest may be anything ranging from conservation of the environment to fighting for human rights.  Aruna Roy who quit her prestigious job in the civil services in order to work for t