Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Lesson No. 1 from Karnataka: There’s no ethics in politics , stupid is the title of Chetan Bhagat’s article in today’s Times of India , a newspaper that has sold itself to Bhagat’s beloved political party. I am among those whom he has labelled as “stupid” but I refuse to accept the label. Here is the reason.    Bhagat’s only argument in the verbose article is that in “desperate times” political parties can resort to unethical practices in order to win. Winning is more important than ethics. The end justifies the means, in other words, and that is a somersault from what the Father of the Nation had taught us. We have indeed come a long way, too long a way, from the Mahatma and his ideals.    What is ironical is that the party which created the “desperate times” is indulging in practices which Bhagat (or Bhakt, as many people have begun to call him) has adjudged as unethical. Leaving aside ethics for a moment, plain logic will tell us that the party which has created the

French writer Anatole France was of the opinion that until we have loved an animal a part of our soul remains unawakened. Among the many parts of my soul that remained unawakened was love for animals. I would admire them from a distance and quite a lot of them are far more admirable than many human beings. The ‘fearful symmetry’ of Blake’s Tiger and the ‘shining tail’ of Lewis Carroll’s Crocodile move me to wonder but I wouldn’t get too close to them anyway. Why, for that matter, I wouldn’t get too close to the loyallest of dogs or the cutest of cats just because I couldn’t tolerate some of their habits like the dogs leaving their signature piss all over the place or the cats licking their paws narcissistically.    A cat walked into my soul a few weeks back, however. Someone was tired of the cat’s intemperate love and hence abandoned it in the farm behind my house. Maybe, he was abandoned on the roadside in the night and he just strolled into my farm. I saw it roaming round

Happiness has to be discovered. It has to be created especially since we live in a world that ineluctably takes a perverse pleasure in injecting misery into our veins relentlessly. There is a political system which impinges on us with its taxes and taxonomies. There is the society with its unforgiving creeds and codes. And there is our religion with its insatiably hungry gods. Then there are our personal sorrows and anxieties. Our very genetic makeup can be our worst enemy. As one writer (whose name I can’t recall now) said, “There is a man within me who is angry with me.” I have had tremendous problems confronting that angry man within me. I have struggled with myself for years and years. I never liked me and I always found it difficult to believe if someone told me that I was a loveable person. My wife’s boundless patience with the angry man within me helped to tame the anger. Her patience with me taught me to be patient with my students. Her love taught me the real magi

While reading Shashi Tharoor’s latest book, Why I am a Hindu , I got stuck at a quote from Swami Vivekananda. “Unity in variety is the plan of nature, and the Hindu has recognised it,” goes the quote from a speech delivered by the great Hindu in Chicago. “Every other religion lays down certain fixed dogmas and tries to compel society to adopt them.” Swami Vivekananda then went on to compare religious teachings to a coat. Truth is like a coat of a fixed size for most religions. The size is fixed by the Rabbi or Pope or Mullah or Godman. Whoever you are, you have to wear that coat. Never mind the hilarious look it may give you because it just doesn’t suit you. You have to wear it if you want to belong to this religion. The meaning of religion is accepting the given truths blindly. Don’t question. Don’t dispute. Don’t doubt. Just accept. Accept what is shoved down your throat. “The Hindus have discovered that the absolute can only be realized, or thought of, or stated through the

Image courtesy Truth is rather banal and often ugly too. Falsehood is so charming that it spreads like wildfire through gossips and rumours via social networks as well as so-called national television channels newspapers. Quite many people in India have sold their souls to falsehood, it appears, as the media channels have sold themselves to the government. When a national leader of the stature of Amit Shah (whether he deserves the position or we deserve him there is a different matter) professes shamelessly that the fate of Karnataka would have been different if the Congress-JD(S) MLAs were not locked up in a resort throws a blinding light on the fortress of falsehood erected by the Kaliyuga Chanakya and his loyal emperor. The claim is not very unlike a burglar’s declaration that your possessions will be his if you leave your door unlocked. Perhaps too many Indians are indeed leaving their doors unlocked. Not the doors of their houses but the doors of their judgment.

I sit in the centre of a black hole, thwarting Light rays and science laws, charting Joys and sorrows of the universe, mixing Memory and desire and love, longing To draw the universe to my core. I am the nucleus of a singularity; And my love surpasses infinity Flowing from the plenitude of my being And bounded, alas, by a black horizon. Nothing can ever go beyond the horizon. Love is a great conqueror. Echo was the best of all    that I ever drew to my core. She was    the distil of the finest mist    the ardour of the deepest hope    the sigh in the sweetest dream    the pearl in the saddest tear Echo was the best of all    that I ever pinned with my love. Hurled into the whirlpool    that swirled inward       from the brink to the core          by the charm of my warmth Echo was the best of all    that ever pined for the best.  I am the best. I am the core of the fire   that burns in the human heart I am the he

Image from Xinature Last year during Onam Amit Shah greeted Malayalis in the name of Vamana Jayanti. The Malayalis not only pooh-poohed him but also trolled him left and right, up and down, so much so that the BJP President was left black and blue in the social media. Wishing the Malayali Happy Vamana Jayanti on the occasion of Onam is like asking the Bengali to celebrate the Durga Puja as the martyrdom of Mahishasura. There are people in India who worship Ravana as a divine entity. Imagine telling that to the North Indian who burns the effigy of the ten-headed villain during Dussehra. In short, India is a country with an infinite variety of festivals as well as cultures. Hinduism is not at all a monolithic religion. The gods worshipped in one part of the country may be demons in another and vice-versa. That is the fantastic diversity that India is even within the single religion of Hinduism, let alone the diversity contributed by other religions such as Islam, Sikhism, Ch