Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Obituary Father Thomas Augustine Some memories run in your veins like a soothing feeling. They are left by people who have touched your heart one way or another. A simple gesture, a timely help, or a kind word at the right moment: that’s enough to leave lasting impressions on the palimpsest of our memories. Today I’m destined to bid farewell to a person who left a few such memories in my being. An automobile accident has brought a tragic end to Father Thomas Augustine’s life. He was a priest in the congregation of the Salesians of Don Bosco. I was 15 when I met him first at a Salesian school in Tirupattur, Tamil Nadu, where I was a trainee for priesthood and he was a teacher. My memoir, Autumn Shadows , recalls how he made a place for himself in my memories. Let me quote the relevant passage: I cried when I was diagnosed with chicken pox as if it was the most grievous sin on my part not to have protected myself against the disease which had already contracted two oth

If you fight with monsters, you are likely to become a monster. If you gaze into an abyss, the abyss gazes back into you, as Nietzsche said. Stand in front of the mirror and see the beauty that stares back at you. If you don’t see beauty, discover it; wait in front of the mirror until it reveals the beauty to you, your beauty. If the mirror doesn’t reveal your beauty, you won’t ever discover it. I know people who travel miles and miles in search of their own beauty. They go on pilgrimages. They ascend mountains. They traverse deserts. They cross oceans. And return weather-beaten. If travel doesn’t make you younger, stand before your mirror and look at yourself again. Your god is not in any temple, church or mosque. Your god lies in that mirror. If that god doesn’t smile back at you, you are a gonner. No pilgrimage, no religion, no ritual will ever save you. Get back to the basics. Start from the scratch. It doesn’t matter how much you donate to temples, godmen, o

The tombs of Mumtaz and Shah Jahan inside the Taj “Mumtaz, my beloved, my heartthrob,” Shahjahan was in his usual romantic mood. “My most noble, magnificent, majestic, unique…” he went on until Mumtaz put her finger on his lips. “You silly,” she chided him mockingly, “they are the 99 names of Allah the Great. Even the burning passion of your romance…” She paused a moment to think whether it was burning passion of romance or romance of burning passion . Then she continued without correcting herself anyway, “… does not permit such blasphemy.” “Hahaha,” Shahjahan laughed merrily and said, “Four centuries. We have waited here in this cenotaph for four centuries hoping that Allah would take us from here to Jannatul Firdaus and nothing happened…” “Except that you crept from your tomb into mine,” Mumtaz laughed. “And we created our Firdaus here in our tombs. What greater blasphemy could we commit?” “We pour out our feelings, ya Allah; You only hear the words.” Mu

Illustration from the NCERT English textbook for class 12 Derry is a 14-year-old boy in Susan Hill’s short play, ‘On the face of it’. He has a terrible scar on side of his face caused by an acid burn. He hates himself because of that and that self-hatred makes him hate everyone else too. An elderly person, Mr Lamb, whom Derry meets by chance teaches him the most vital lessons of life. You have a scar, so what? Mr Lamb asks Derry. You have everything that a normal boy has: arms and legs, brain and heart, and so on. If you want you can be a success. Let other people say what they want about your scar. We can’t make other people shut their mouths, but we can choose to ignore what they say. “ Keep your ears shut ,” Mr Lamb says. Keep your ears shut when required and start looking at life squarely on the face . You can’t keep running away all the time. Life has to be faced. There was a man who kept running away from risks. He was afraid that he might slip on a banana peel a

Sex is arguably the most pernicious sin in Christianity given that most people don’t commit murder.  The first thing Adam and Eve did after eating the forbidden fruit was to hide themselves from God in shame.  They felt ashamed of their nakedness.  They felt ashamed of their sexuality.  The Bible says that as soon as they ate the forbidden fruit Adam and Eve “knew things they had never known before.  They realised they were naked.  So they sewed together fig leaves and made clothes for themselves.” (Genesis 3:7) What were the things that “they had never known”?  What led them to the realisation of their nakedness?  The Bible doesn’t explain that.  John Milton put it in brilliant poetry in his epic Paradise Lost .  Adam and Eve were intoxicated as if they had drunk new wine, sang Milton.  They swam in mirth and felt divinity taking wings within them.  Carnal desire enflamed both of them.  Milton says that they burnt in lust.  Milton’s Adam tells Eve, “We have lost so much

“Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” One of Bernard Shaw’s characters said that with the typical Shavian piquancy. I have been a teacher by profession all my life and I am on the verge of retirement. When a fellow blogger suggests a topic like ‘ Can teachers today be called “the untalented leftovers”? ’ and it receives a record number of votes from bloggers, I am more amused than chagrined. Well, to start with myself as an example, I think the blogger who suggested the topic has a point because I was an “untalented leftover”. I was not particularly good at anything. I failed to secure even a bank clerk’s job. A conspiracy of chromosomes contrived to make me a priest and I failed absolutely by ending up as an atheist. The mother of a student of mine met me the other day and complained that her daughter opted for English literature at college because of me. I swelled with pride, only to have that bubble of pride punctured by her next statement: “Why did she have to s

They hailed him a great nationalist when he stopped writing politics and turned to blogging about food and fad. He had started donning a waistcoat of a particular cut. Please, don’t insult me calling me a cultural leader: His heart pleaded, silently. What culture am I to lead? Grabbing, raping and lynching? Culture of hate that masquerades as patriotism? When the TV channels were busy finding accolades for the political leaders, the cultural leader was forming WhatsApp groups for neo nationalists. The arrests of honest people didn’t disturb the cultural leader’s devotion to WhatsApp. Nor did the disappearance of hearts from writers. Nor did the death of poetry on the wayside. Nor did the rape of justice on the highway. He knew the truth, however, in the core of his heart. That he was nothing more than a coward. This article will throw light on the poem.