Tomichan Matheikal's blog

India is passing through a historical period of self-purification.  Our Prime Minister is putting an end to black money and corruption.  Our Supreme Court is feeding patriotism into our hearts via cinema halls.  Now the apex court has weaned our politics from our gods.  125 crore Indians may go down in history as the people who sanitised a whole polity. Can politics exist without corruption?  Can greed be washed out of human hearts?  Can religion be separated from public affairs especially politics? Politics and Corruption Corruption is an integral part of politics simply because politics is about power and power is about subordination of most people by a few.  Subordination, swindling, manipulation, exploitation... these are the normal synonyms of power unless you are a dyed-in-the-wool idealist.  There is no power structure without bribery, cronyism, nepotism, extortion, parochialism, embezzlement, and whatever helps one climb up the endless rungs of the ascent. 

In Orhan Pamuk’s novel, My Name is Red , a dog takes offence when a religious preacher calls his enemies dogs.  “It is common knowledge that hajis, hojas, clerics and preachers despise us dogs,” says Dog who thinks that it is because the Prophet [“peace and blessings be upon him”] once displayed a special affection to a cat by cutting off a piece of his robe on which the cat was sleeping rather than disturb the creature.  Says Dog, “By pointing out this affection shown to the cat, which has incidentally been denied to us dogs, and due to our eternal feud with this feline beast, which even the stupidest of men recognizes as an ingrate, people have tried to intimate that the Prophet himself disliked dogs.” The dog knows that religious likes and dislikes can be shaped as easily as the scriptures can be interpreted variously to suit each one’s taste and motive.  The dog is religious too.  It is proud of the fact that a dog it was that guarded the seven young men who took refuge in

What’s new year except in your calendars and calculated measurements?  For me, there are only the cyclical motions.  When I complete one revolution round the sun you call it a year.  Is there really a beginning and an end in a cyclical motion? Have you ever watched a child drawing a circle with a compass?  He begins somewhere, a random point, comes back to it and continues a little more to make sure that the beginning is not seen.  Even the child knows that a circle doesn’t have a beginning.  Nor an end.  Like eternity.  Eternity is a cycle.  Have you ever thought of that? This is an endless motion for me, my life.  Your scientists have given it a beginning and calculated its likely end too.  Billions of years.  But what do years mean to me?  Mine is a cyclical motion round the sun.  The sun holds me to itself.  Yet I can’t ever get closer to it.  This distance between it and me is what makes my journey delightful.  There’s longing in this journey.  To get closer.  Occasi