Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Some of Rael's female followers Image from here Religion can be quite funny and occasionally weird if you are a sceptic or non-believer watching it from the periphery.   Believers pour hundreds of litres of milk on a mass of granite while thousands of children go hungry in the vicinity. Buxom ladies sweep littered floors of temples with much hardship while they won’t even dust the furniture at home. I can understand the ritualistic fulfilment that the believer derives from such practices because I was a similar believer myself once. There was a period in my life when I flagellated myself with my belt believing that would rein in my carnal addictions. Today such practices bring a wry smile to my lips. That’s why, perhaps, the very title of the book Intelligent Design: Message from the Designers by Rael caught my fancy. The author-publisher advertised it as a kind of Bible inspired by the “intelligent designers” of life on earth. Curiosity egged me on and I read the en

Many people on Facebook have advised me to go to Pakistan though I have time and again stated clearly that what I dislike about present India is that it is becoming increasingly like Pakistan. The Sangh Parivar has more or less succeeded in creating what Dr Shashi Tharoor has tersely named ‘Hindu Pakistan’. This morning broke with someone dispatching me to Israel. If the “Indian Hindu culture” was not as “tolerant” as it was, I “would have been born in Israel” – that’s what the Facebook pundit wrote sounding rather ominous. I don’t know why this person wishes to consign me to Israel. There is tremendous irony in the suggestion since Israel was created for a people who were victimised by Fascism which seems to sustain the ideology of the Sangh Parivar. I’m writing this to make one thing clear to these Facebook champions of the “Indian Hindu culture” who assume that I am an enemy of that culture. I am NOT. I have great respect for the profundity of the Upanishads. I am con

The company mattes on the way If destination is all that mattered, the graveyard would be the happiest place. What really matters is what happens between the cradle and the grave. That is true about leisurely travels too. Some of my happiest journeys were the treks in the Garhwal Himalayas which were all made with students while I taught in Delhi. My first trek was to Hemkund which is at 4633 metres (15,200 feet) above sea level. Dr S C Biala, the principal of the school, was a passionate mountaineer and he introduced mountaineering to the school. Though I was initially hesitant about my physical ability for a trek of that sort, I fell in love with trekking after that first experience. In the next few years, I trekked to quite a few peaks in the Garwhal Himalayas with my students and loved all of them. The destination is not what really matters when you go trekking. Most of the places like Hemkund or Gaumukh have nothing much to offer for sight-seeing or anything. It i

Fiction Image courtesy: Pexels “Mother died,” Lily said without any introduction as soon as her sister answered the call. “Good for her,” Rose said after a sigh. “When was it?” “Last night. Pop saw her in the morning lying dead in her bed.” “How did you know?” “Daisy rang up.” Daisy was their younger sister. She still has connections with some people in their hometown in the fishing coasts of Kochi. They were four sisters: Lily, Rose, Daisy and Zinnia, in that order, the last two being twins and the youngest. When their mother was pregnant with the twins, father was very certain that it was going to be a boy. “Big tummy. Means boy,” he said looking at Ma’s belly. Ma told them later about it when they were grown up enough to understand the dark underbelly of relationships. When father was told that it was twins, and that too girls, he refused to see them. He walked out, spat out angrily and contemptuously on the way to the local joint where he got drunk on illic

Mountains look formidable from a distance. When you start ascending them, a slow realisation hits you that they are more seductive than formidable. You conquer heights and your vision expands. Finally you are there, at the zenith, with a whole world lying stretched before you. What was it that I dreaded before I began the ascent? You wonder. And you look at the higher peak that catches your eyes. It beckons you like a seductress. Why don’t you surrender to that seduction? It’s so much better to be there on a peak, breathing in the smell of the pines, looking at a wider horizon, and wishing you were a bird that could stretch out the wings and fly, fly away, rather than be down here listening to quotidian slogans shouted by faceless mouths. What’s more: you realise that you have just conquered a peak but that you have conquered yourself.   From Richard Bach You have conquered yourself. That’s the real ascent. Now you see things differently as a result of that conquest

This was the village road until two years ago Sunday is the best day in the village not because it is a holiday for me as for others too but because the village road becomes desolate. It doesn’t look like a village at all on weekdays because of the heavy traffic on the road. Sunday is a holiday for the road too, mercifully. I have walked on this road for years and years during my childhood. There were hardly any vehicles those days except a rare, rickety bus and a few bicycles. People walked kilometres in those days, most of them barefoot, with the sky above their head and small dreams at the feet. Hardly anyone walks these days and the dreams have gone abroad.   The village river has not changed much except for increased pollution When I decided to leave Delhi and opted for a rural life, many well-wishers advised me against it. “You won’t survive there more than a year,” one told me with the certainly of a prophet. “You give me a year!” I retorted. “I give mysel

Happiness is a choice. Wandering on the rugged landscapes of Kerala’s folklore is a character popularly known as Naranath Bhranthan. Bhranthan in Malayalam means ‘lunatic’. Naranath Bhranthan was not really as mad as he pretended to be. He was an enlightened person. He understood the absurdity of life even more clearly than Albert Camus who employed Sisyphus to illustrate the absurdity of life. Sisyphus pushes a boulder uphill knowing fully well that the vindictive gods will push it down before it reaches the zenith just to mock him. He will put his shoulder to the boulder again and again with the full knowledge of his condemned fate. Sisyphus is happy, nevertheless, in Camus’s interpretation of the myth. For Camus’s Sisyphus, happiness is a choice. His happiness is his revenge against the gods who punished him. Kerala’s Naranath Bhranthan also rolled a boulder uphill. He was not punished by anyone, however. He chose to roll the boulder uphill and then push it down. H