Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Religious nationalism is more dangerous than religious fundamentalism because it plays with two identities: religious and national. All of a sudden people belonging to all religious faiths except that of the majority become enemies if not traitors. The five years of Mr Narendra Modi’s reign have converted India into what some observers have labelled as “a Republic of Hate ”. Muslims, Christians and even Hindu Dalits have been the targets of violent attacks during the last five years. Anyone who questions such attacks and intolerance is labelled as anti-national. The only true patriot in present India is a militant Hindu who carries the venom of hatred in his heart. The Prime Minister and his confidante Mr Amit Shah also express their hatred for the minority communities in their speeches and even go to the extent of making venomous statements against certain states and regions of the country which are populated by Muslims and Christians. Mr Modi’s utterance about Mr Rahul Gand

My beloved writer Albert Camus said, “Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” I have almost completed a book titled Autumn Shadows . It is my own story, a sort of autobiography. Forgive the presumptuousness of a very ordinary person who dares to write a memoir. Every person has a story to tell, I’m sure. I don’t know how interesting my story is. I had to tell it for my own reasons. Let me give a short extract from that book here. The memoir will be published soon as an e-book soon at Amazon. This is a hype that I’m trying to create in the autumn of my life when every leaf is turning out to be a flower, a beautiful flower.  Here’s the extract from the first chapter. Insects come to die in my living room. Every morning I sweep them into the dustpan from beneath the fluorescent lamp where they lie dead in a heap of atomic dark spots while Maggie prepares the morning’s red tea flavoured with a leaf or two of tulsi or mint picked freshly from our little kitchen g

It is rather hard to believe that you get rewarded according to your deeds when you live in a world in which the wicked flourish and the righteous perish. You see mass murderers mount high pedestals and preach dharma to the people. Swindlers are winners and the honest lose out pathetically in the rat race that life has been converted into. There is no morality or dharma in the universe. The planets may follow their orbits; that is gravity, not dharma. The stars shine; that’s thermodynamics, not moral benevolence. That world of stars and planets can also buffet you with storms and other cataclysms. We can take such cataclysms as punishments for our misdeeds: punishment from gods or the universe itself. That is a matter of belief. In the world of belief, just anything is possible. Angels can become demons and vice-versa. That is the power of belief. Do you know about people like Joan of Arc who were burnt at the stake as the foulest heretics and then later were declared sa

A teacher may never know where her influence ends. When I was a student at school, teachers were terrorists who relied more on corporal punishment than teaching. Hence the school was a dreadful place and I can’t recall any of my school teachers with anything akin to affection. I would rather not recall those days. I had some very memorable teachers at college, however. They are remembered more for their personal touch than their teaching though they were excellent at their job too. As a teacher myself, I drew a lot of lessons from those college teachers of mine. I realised the validity of the ancient Indian wisdom which exhorted a teacher to know both his subject and his student. Both are equally important if one wishes to be an effective teacher. A good teacher touches the hearts of his students while imparting knowledge in his subject. Imparting knowledge may not be the right phrase. An effective teacher creates eagerness in his students to learn his subject. The subje

Let me start with a disclaimer: this is not a review of the Malayalam movie, Lucifer . These are some thoughts that came to my mind as I watched the movie today. However, just to give an idea about the movie: it’s a good entertainer with an engaging plot, Bollywood style settings, superman type violence in which the hero decimates the villains with pomp and show, and a spicy dance that is neatly tucked into the terribly orgasmic climax of the plot. The theme is highly relevant and that is what engaged me more. The role of certain mafia gangs in political governance is a theme that deserves to be examined in a good movie. In the movie, the mafia-politician nexus is busted and, like in our great myths, virtue triumphs over vice. Such a triumph is an artistic requirement. Real life, however, follows the principle of entropy: chaos flourishes with vengeance. Lucifer is the real winner in real life. The title of the movie as well as a final dialogue from the eponymous hero sugg

“Joe, get me the broom from the porch,” Mamma said. It was past 8 o’clock in the evening and little Joe was afraid of the dark. “Oh, don’t be afraid, sonny,” said Mamma, “God is there to take care of you.” Joe opened the door and said, “God, if you’re out there, will you hand over the broom, please?” Mamma was annoyed. What a silly boy! She thought. The other day, when she told her that the milk came from the cows, Joe looked at the milk bottle and asked, “How can a cow sit on a bottle like that?” But to Mamma’s surprise now, a broom was handed over to little Joe who did not dare to step out of the door.   “Who’s there?” Mamma asked concealing her panic. “It’s me, madam.” A man appeared at the door. “I’m your candidate in the coming election. Won’t you vote for me?” “Oh, God!” Mamma sighed. “Yes, madam, I belong to God’s own party: the Punya Janata Party, PJP. Please vote for us. You know that we are going to make India a Punya Rashtra. The cow is our sym

Reading is one of the ideal hobbies. You can be all by yourself and live in a world different from the actual one around you which is likely to be quite unpleasant. I spend my free time usually with books. The one that is waiting right now to be read is Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali . Published in 2007, it is the autobiography of a Somali-born Dutch-American activist and feminist. It tells the real story of a fighter who “survived civil war, female circumcision, brutal beatings, an adolescence as a devout believer, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, and life in four countries under dictatorships” (from the blurb). I love people who struggle and fight against the mediocre world that relentlessly seeks to destroy the intelligent, liberal thinkers. Ayaan Hirsi Ali belongs to that group. In the introduction to the book, Christopher Hitchens tells us that the oft-heard advice that “we should not judge a religion by the actions of its fringe extremists” is absurd when we consid