Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Here’s why you shouldn’t walk on escalators is one of the headlines in today’s Times of India .  The report, written by Christopher Mele and originally published in New York Times two days back , is an excellent example of how statistics and mathematics can create imaginary worlds which appear real.  Take an example.  Suppose a man wants to calculate the average income of people living on Altamount Road in Mumbai.  He will arrive at a figure which will astound almost all the people living there until they realise that Mukesh Ambani’s house, Antilia, is also situated on their road.  From the New York Times The researcher in Mele’s report did just that.  Let me simplify the findings.  Imagine yourself in a metro railway station which has escalators. Don’t imagine Connaught Place in Delhi whose escalators are so overcrowded at any time that nobody can even dream of walking up or down any of those escalators.  Imagine a sparsely populated metro station. There are ten pa

I wish I could remember the first book I read all by myself as a child.  When was it?  How did I feel about it?  What did I learn from it?  The answers would have thrown much light into my childhood.  But there are no answers.  Like quite many adults, I too am an obsolete child still searching for a lot of things.  What did I search for as a child?  I wonder. I remember that I read quite many books as a child especially since my father was a voracious reader who had a fairly large collection of books which he was very possessive about.  It wasn’t easy for us children to access his library.  He selected the books for us.  He probably knew that literature is a textually transmitted disease which can contaminate childhood if not distort it.  Hence he would rather have us read children’s magazines like Balarama which has survived to this day.  Interestingly I still find Balarama worth a read; it contains fabulous treasures though compared to my childhood days the magazine has und

Every child is a dream particularly for the parents. A dream that unfolds gradually as the child grows up and ascends the ladder of success. The education of the child plays the most vital role in that process right from the kindergarten. Source A child who is admitted to KG today will complete her schooling after 14 years. It is then that the dream takes on added wings. Career becomes the focus. Education becomes a challenge. The right institution of higher learning and the expenses involved become the concern of the parents. The expenditure after 14 years will be more than double of what it is today. That is, if the completion of a chosen course requires Rs 30 lakh today, the amount will be about Rs 70 lakh in the year 2031, when the KG child of today will complete her class 12. Planning becomes essential for parents. Right from the time the child is admitted to the KG. Planning is more important today than ever because we live in a world that is changing rapidly. Yeste

“There is a longstanding body of psychological evidence that shows that lecturing people that they are wrong, listing a bunch of facts that conclusively demonstrate that, and busting the myths spread by irresponsible political opponents not only fails to change minds, it makes people more fixed in their views.”  These words of Sonia Sudha in her recent Guardian article, ‘ Outrage makes you feel good, but doesn’t change minds ,’ set me on a contemplation course like self-help books used to do once upon a time. When the contemplation was over I spoke to a few friends over phone, something which I hardly do these days.  I had chosen relative solitude for a huge variety of reasons one of which is erosion of trust in people.  The phone conversations turned out to be quite rewarding unlike what I had expected.  The friends were candid in telling me that my political views are out of tune with popular moods or things similar.  In short, I wasn’t achieving anything good by writing them.

Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code is essentially an expression of man’s longing for a different world.  The plot revolves round the quest for the Holy Grail which in the end turns out to be nothing.  “The End of Days” when the Grail was supposed to be revealed turns out to be nothing more than “a legend of paranoid minds,” according to a character in the novel.  It is the mystery of life and our capacity for wonderment that is the real Holy Grail, the character explains. The novel is primarily a thriller.  But the author is a highly knowledgeable person who makes ample and effective use of his knowledge about the Catholic Church and its institutions.  The Church has reasons to be irate with Dan Brown because the novel undermines one of the most fundamental doctrines of Catholicism: that Jesus was a bachelor.  Mary Magdalene is Jesus’ wife in the novel’s exploration and their lineage continues to this day.  Aphrodite Ancient Greek goddess Emperor Constantine’s enthusia

Our perception constitutes most of our realities.  That’s why one man’s food is another’s anathema.  What is divine for me may be profane for you and vice versa.  In Dan Brown’s most controversial novel, The Da Vinci Code , Langdon tells Sophie, “ [E]very faith in the world is based on fabrications.  That is the definition of faith – acceptance of that which we imagine to be true , that which we cannot prove.” [Italics in the original] We take a lot of things on faith.  When it comes to religion, faith is all that matters.  And faith necessarily transmogrifies reality.  Faith can make an animal more sacred than your neighbour whom you may kill in order to safeguard the sacredness of the animal.  The sacred animal, like anything else in religion, is a metaphor.  “Every religion describes God through metaphor, allegory and exaggeration, from the early Egyptians through modern Sunday school,” explains Langdon.  “Metaphors are a way to help our minds process the unprocessib

When you play with children, choose to lose.  Winning means a whole new world to children.   When you play with religious leaders, choose to lose.  If they don’t win against you, you are damned.  Read history if you don’t believe me.  The best scientists, the best artists, the best writers, all chose to lose to religion.  Remember Galileo, for example.  Or Leonardo da Vinci. Salman Rushdie is a living example.  There are infinite examples in between. Religious leaders are children.  With the difference that some of their physical organs have grown beyond childhood. When you play with politicians, never lose.  If you lose, you are doomed.  The best is never play with politicians, unless you are an incorrigible crook or you are desperate enough to be shot dead in some encounter-killing-game staged with the help of the state machinery. Now imagine playing with a religious leader who is also the chief minister of your state.  Having watched some of the TV appearances of Yog