Tomichan Matheikal's blog

American singer and actor Reba McEntire identified wish, guts and humour as the three ingredients of success. She called them “wishbone, backbone and funny bone.” Life is a struggle from birth to death. It is a struggle against all sorts of hurdles and pitfalls that inevitably come our way. In order to overcome those hurdles and pitfalls, we need dreams, guts and humour. There are plenty of examples from history to illustrate this. Let me take an old example: the family of King Edward I of England and his wife. Queen Eleanor (1241-1307) bore 16 children between 1255 and 1284. She lived in palaces, ate the best food, had all the luxury she could wish for in those days, and also had an army of servants and the best of doctors. Yet her children died one after another. 1.      First daughter died in 1255 at birth. 2.      Daughter Catherine died in childhood, did not live beyond the age of 3. 3.      Another daughter Joan died at the age of six months. 4.      Son John

Everyone has a story to tell: his or her own. I chose to tell my story for various reasons and it has been published by Amazon. Let me present a few extracts from the book. To start with, here’s the blurb: Reading Autumn Shadows has been a cathartic experience. He has not put his past to a palliative erasure , rather has discovered its value as a trace , something to re-member and re-launch into an adventure of love and life, redrawing the boundaries of humanity, religion and spirituality. It is a reminder to individuals that revisiting our lives and coming to terms with our journeys is well worth the effort to reinvent ourselves and take the Nietzschean plunge into reality. The book also states that love is personal, equally political, and a search.                                                 By Dr Jose D Maliekal, Author of Standstill Utopias and Professor of Philosophy From Chapter 12, ‘Second Class Citizen’: In 1986, soon after my arrival in Shillong,

Most of my boyhood companions have either retired from their jobs or are on the verge of retirement. Officially I have a year left for entering that stage of life in which you never get a day off. Personally, I wouldn’t want to retire at all till the last breath. Being practical, I know that the best time to start thinking about retirement is before my boss does. School reopened yesterday after a month’s summer holiday. Reopened partly, that is; the whole school will reopen when the monsoon ushers in a totally different mood in the state. As we got ready to go to school yesterday, Maggie remarked about the inertia that the one month vacation had built into her psyche. It is then I realised that I was waiting for the school to reopen. I hope my boss won’t think of my retirement too soon though I know that even he is restricted by the given system. What actually buoys me up is the reward I receive from my students for my efforts. The results of the Board Exams were release

Fiction “Jet Airways acknowledges the valuable support we received from passengers like you for over 25 years. We regret to inform you that this is our last flight as we are suspending our services from tomorrow…” Tony looked at the passenger next to him to make sure whether he had a sense of humour. The passenger’s belly that sat heavily on his lap led him to the assumption that he must have a sense of humour. So he said turning to him, “Hope they won’t suspend the service mid-air; may God save us.” “What?” The passenger woke up from some reverie. “Did they say ‘May God save us’? Means there’s no hope?” And he laughed. “Oh, no!” Tony hoped that the airlines was secular. At least the hemlines of the skirts of the airhostesses were secular, he had noticed. “They just said that their achhe din are coming to an end.” “Hahaha,” the passenger laughed and his belly danced in his lap. “ Achhe din came to an end for everybody in India some five years back, din’t they?”

Book Review The meaning and purpose of life are themes that have enchanted thinkers from time immemorial. Philosophers and psychologists have given us umpteen theories on them. Novelists have entertained us with gripping stories about the same. Manu Joseph’s novel, The Illicit Happiness of Other People , is another gripping novel on the theme of life’s meaning and purpose. The real protagonist of the novel, 17 year-old Unni Chacko, is dead three years before the novel begins. He jumped to his death from the terrace of his three storey apartment. Why did he commit suicide when he was a brilliant student and exceptionally gifted cartoonist? His father, Ousep Chacko, wants to find it out and the novel is about that quest. Ousep is an alcoholic. Once upon a time he was a promising writer. Now he is a mediocre journalist and a total failure as a husband and father to Mariamma and Thoma respectively. Mariamma would love to see him dead and even thinks of killing him. Ou

Pretending is one of the keys to happiness, says Nat King Cole in the above song. "Pretending isn't very hard to do," he says. Most of us do pretend quite a lot. We pretend to be very spiritual or religious just because most others do the same thing and we don't want to be odd ones out. We pretend to be tolerant when we are actually afraid to question what we know is wrong. Some people pretend to be nationalists when their actual problem is an identity crisis. There is an increasing tribe of people in contemporary India whose love for a certain animal is nothing more than a mask placed over their snarling hatred of a particular community of people.  In spite of these negative examples I've cited, Nat King Cole is right. Pretending expedites happiness. If you can smile when your inner world is actually crumbling, you are likely to attract the better things in the world to you and thus mitigate your misery.  Going one more step ahead, if you start pretendin

Image from Wikipedia Character is something deeply ingrained and difficult to change, according to most psychologists including Eric Fromm. Fromm believed that character stems from our genetic inheritance and our learning experiences. Some aspects of our character come from our parents. They are in our genes and we don’t have much choice about them. Other aspects are learnt from home, school and society. There is also a lot of interplay between the two. It is not easy to change one’s character which is formed in one’s childhood mostly. Certain traumatic experiences bring about major changes in a person’s character. A better way to bring about radical changes is self-awareness. Fromm divides people into 5 personality types. 1. The Receptive Type People of this type are passive and almost totally dependent on others. They require constant support from somebody or the other, like the family, friends or some group.   They lack confidence in their own abilities and