Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Perspective matters more than anything else because it determines how you see the world and how you see determines what you do with it.   All these people who go about fighting and killing in the name of their gods and totems have their own perspectives.   Those who create the flyovers and skyscrapers have their perspectives too.   What should really worry us is the importance enjoyed by the fighter and the killer while the builder remains in the darkness of the background.   The fighters and killers have become important because our own perspectives are so limited, so contaminated and so perverted.   If only we could see a world in a grain of sand, like William Blake, and heaven in a wild flower, we would be infinitely more spiritual than all these fighters and killers who claim to be god’s own people.   As Albert Einstein said, a person who is religiously enlightened is one who has liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoug

One of the readers wrote the above as a comment on a Frontline article .   It would deserve no attention whatsoever had it not been becoming a dominant perspective in the country.   What the man is saying in short is: India belongs to Hindus and the others have no rights. The view in the comment is rather self-contradictory.   On the one hand, the writer is saying that India is superior to the “40” Islamic countries because Hindus are “by nature secular.”   On the other hand, he is arguing for saffronisation of the country.   This contradiction is inherent in most right wing perspectives these days.   That is because people know that Hindutva is essentially an unwholesome ideology founded on hatred and little else.   However, what really intrigues me is not the hatred that underlies the ideology or not even the contradictions exhibited by its upholders.   When people argue that the majority is right or that the majority have all rights, I cannot but laugh.   Fi

I have to pass through the kindergarten of my school as I walk from the parking lot to the office where I have to punch the attendance. The innocence that sparkles through the smiles of the kids and their other expressions such as bafflement are good things to start the day with.   As I passed by those charming expressions this morning a thought occurred to me: why is innocence one of the inevitable prices to be paid for growing up?   The children naturally lose those innocent expressions as they grow up.   The smiles become warped and may even disappear altogether.   Human society smothers the smiles of children.   Innocence has to give way to deviousness. Couldn’t it be better?   I wondered as I climbed up the staircase and walked towards my staffroom.   Why didn’t the process of evolution add more benevolent genes to the species?   Why did evil become so predominant in human nature? Well, I know that these questions have no answers unless we accept the answers gi