Tomichan Matheikal's blog

A country is really free only when its citizens are free.  Freedom is not merely deliverance from foreign occupation.  Freedom is deliverance from poverty, injustice and other social evils as well as personal evils such as greed and jealousy which give birth to corruption of all sorts.  India is yet to be free.    There are millions of people in India who go to bed hungry even after seven decades of independence.  There are millions who don’t have access to basic healthcare.  Our public distributions systems and primary healthcare systems are abject failures.  The country is still enslaved by poverty.  Can we call it a free country? A man who has to carry the dead body of his wife on his shoulders for kilometres because he cannot afford to hire a vehicle should shake us out of our smugness.  He is a poignant symbol of the callousness that marks a governance which gives more importance to cows, idols and myths. India needs deliverance from its holy cows and myths.  It i

The worst sin is the refusal to confront one’s inner demons.  Redemption lies in accepting those demons and learning to grapple with them.  This is the fundamental theme of Khaled Hosseini’s celebrated novel, The Kite Runner . “... a boy who won’t stand up for himself becomes a man who won’t stand up to anything.”  Rahim Khan, one of the characters, tells Amir the protagonist. Rahim was actually quoting the words of Amir’s father who had assessed his son when the latter was a boy.  Amir never stood up for himself because there was always Hassan, his childhood friend, to stand up for him.  Hassan had no inner demons shelved away neatly in any inner recess of his consciousness. He confronted life as it presented itself to him.  When it was necessary to fight bullies, he did so bravely.  He did the fighting on behalf of Amir too.  But Amir betrayed him.  Amir surrendered to the demon of cowardice.  Every surrender to the inner demons leaves one with guilt.  Amir’s father

Moral Police struck again in Kochi, Kerala.  This time it is men belonging to Shiv Sena who went on a rampage.  They used canes to drive away the youngsters who were allegedly indulging in “immoral activities.”  Marine Drive in Kochi is too public a place for any couple to indulge in any conspicuously immoral activity.  It is possible that some youngsters crossed certain lines drawn by the (hypocritical) conservatism that marks the social life of Kerala.  But who are the Shivsainiks to wield canes when not even parents are allowed to use physical punishment on children?  Kerala is a state that sends teachers to jails for punishing students.  How come some politicians beat young students with canes in front of the police? Source: Deccan Chronicle The first question that comes to mind is what Shiv Sena is doing in Kerala.  Bal Thackeray founded that organisation for defending the Marathi pride?  Eventually it became an organisation of thugs and goons who perpetrated many atro