Tomichan Matheikal's blog

People like the Buddha, the Christ and the Mahatma were acutely aware of the absurdity of human life and sought to bring more meaning to it. Their perspectives differed significantly from the ordinary man’s. They looked at life in substantially different ways, in other words. Jesus’ focus was on love and compassion. He was born a Jew and the Jewish people were highly ritualistic and juridical. Jesus questioned that way of life which was plainly more absurd than the life of people who practised other religions which the Jews regarded as gentile and inferior. Love is the ultimate foundation of Jesus’ teachings. That is diametrically opposed to the Jewish weltanschauung. The Jewish God was a whimsical entity characterised by jealousy, short temper, vindictiveness and a ridiculous share of frivolousness. He created the Paradise apparently only to drive out the human beings from it. He could ask Abraham to sacrifice his own son just to prove the authenticity of the latter’s l

On Kozhikode beach in early 1990s The oceans and the mountains have their unique charms. The mystery of the mountains and the infinity of the oceans can hold us spellbound. Sometimes they invite us to meld into them and vanish altogether. The cliffs have often invited me to jump off them and the seas have stirred similar longings.   At Malampuzha Dam in late 1980s There are other places too without seas and mountains but with a lot of charm and grace. They may be the trails through a village whose pristine beauty has not been swallowed by the octopus of development. Even a desert has its own music to entice us with.   Maggie melding into a shrine at Mahabalipuram in late 1990s A year ago I visited Mango Meadows , world’s first agricultural theme park. It is in central Kerala, 30 acres of land tucked into typical Keralite villages. It has an amazing variety of plants which were once used in Kerala’s traditional medicines. Apart from them, there are also othe

My front yard at night The pain of life is aggravated by a flicker of beauty here, a glimmer of love there, and an occasional touch of compassion here and there. If love went invariably unrequited, if filth was all that one could see around, and if insensitivity was the universal rule, we would learn not to expect anything better. Every flower that blooms in my little garden gives me the impetus to keep fighting the weeds. The weeds are vindictive. They keep smothering the flower plants incessantly. It is far more facile to buy flower pots from the nursery and line them up on my drive walls. But those flowers don’t smile as do the ones that I nurture personally.   The struggles of the little saplings against the mighty weeds remind me of the terrors that life throws along the way. If there were only terrors and their disgrace, however, heaven and hell would have been redundant notions. Where there is only agony, there can be no concept of bliss. But life loves to poke

Certain gadgets have become as inalienable parts of life as our mates. The mobile phone, for example. It’s there with us wherever we are, even as we stand before our deity with our hearts seeped in prayer. Life without the mobile phone is quite unimaginable. It is my link with the world through the density of the internet and the trivia of the social networks. It comes with all the indispensable accessories like the camera, the calendar, the note pad, alarm clock, reminders, and their concomitant orgasms of various degrees. My mobile phone can provide me with all the music I want and even movies.   Smart Watch I spend most of my daytime with young students who possess a whole lot of gadgets which have become part and parcel of their life. They are usually the Smart Wearable gadgets like wrist bands and watches which have built-in GPS and altimeter, activity rings and health apps. When there is a requirement for a speaker for practising a dance, the students come up with a

Half of my stories come from history or mythology and the other half from my imagination. Whatever the origin, each story has something to do with me; each one is an expression of some conflict within my being. “I knew you would come to deliver me from my stony existence,” Ahalya said touching Rama’s feet. That’s how my story Ahalya begins. Ahalya of that story is as much a character from mythology as an expression of my own longing for deliverance. Something similar can be said about each story of mine. I think for all good writers each story is originally an agony within. It is an agony that seeks deliverance. In the words of Maya Angelou, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” The inner agony is metamorphosed into characters created by the writer. The characters may be from history, mythology, the writer’s imagination, or just anywhere like the house next to yours. Whatever the origin, the characters you create in your stories have something

Neither Narendra Modi nor Amit Shah knows how to handle failure, it seems. There is audible rumbling within BJP about the majestic leaders’ refusal to share the blame for the devastating failure of the party in the recent elections. They have held “victory marches” whenever the party won an election in the past four years to take the credit. Why not share the blame now? Failure is not fatal, but the refusal to accept it gracefully and learn the required lessons is. That is the most fundamental principle about failure. Perhaps the only useful thing about failure is the learning of the inevitable lessons. Those who sulk over it, those who rationalise the failure, or those pass the blame to others don’t learn the necessary lessons and stop far short of being great in any way. BJP’s failure in the recent elections in five states has been too resounding to be ignored. The whole country has been looking forward to hear from the two great leaders about how they view the failure

It's been quite a journey together Some nights are very didactic if not entertaining. Last night was one such series of dreams. I wake up from one dream only to glide into another as seamlessly as a train stopping at a station and then moving on. They are not nightmares. On the contrary, they are quite amusing. Only two of last night’s dreams remained vividly in my conscious memory in the morning. In one, I was travelling by a bus with Maggie. Since the bus was overcrowded Maggie and I were in two different parts of the bus: the masculine and feminine halves of Kerala’s buses. Just before my stop arrived, which was near Maggie’s house, some passenger asked me a question. My answer started off a discussion which engaged me so much that I missed my stop and the next and the next. It’s only when Maggie’s call arrived on the mobile phone that I realised my mistake. Maggie awaited me at the right bus stop with her usual smile of amusement and sympathy. The other dream h