Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Socrates accepts the poison Image from masshumanities Today [10 Oct] is the world mental health day. Who is mentally healthy and who is not? It’s not very easy to determine anyone’s sanity. Men and women who were considered insane by significant numbers of people eventually turned out to be geniuses or saints or something similarly eminent. Mahatma Gandhi’s thoughts and views were quite insane by the world’s normal standards. Joan of Arc was considered an insane woman and bunt at the stake for her alleged collusion with the devil before being canonised as a saint by the same Church that burnt her as a witch. Geniuses and saints are insane by the world’s average standards. Psychologist-philosopher William James wrote candidly that religious experiences can have “morbid origins” in brain pathology. Religious experiences are often irrational but nevertheless are largely positive by their outcomes. Geniuses are initially perceived by people as lunatics. A genius sees reality d

Social media has become a powerful tool today in the hands of ordinary people. It gives opportunities to anyone to propagate whatever he wants. As a result, a lot of falsehood gets peddled as truths, reputations are more marred than made, and relationships may be ruptured. I happened to watch a new Malayalam movie today on the theme of the menace of social media. I went to watch another movie in fact, but its timing didn’t suit me and hence I bought tickets for Vikruthi , Mischief. The plot is based on a real incident that took place in Kochi recently. A man named Eldho who has a speech impairment suddenly finds himself in the centre of a whirlpool because of a picture of his that was taken while utter weariness had made him fall asleep lying supine on a row of empty seats in the Kochi Metro train. Eldho had spent the whole night in the hospital where his daughter was being treated in the Intensive Care Unit for pneumonia. But the social media picture lampooned him as a drun

Book Review Robert Greene’s best-selling book, The 48 Laws of Power , fascinated me no end when I read it about two decades ago. I found the book in the capacious library of the erstwhile Sawan Public School, Delhi. Greene struck me as a ruthlessly pragmatic person who knew exactly what he was dealing with. I was never interested in power, but the book taught me all I wanted to know how people acquire power and how power works. Greene brings us real examples, and a whole of lot of them from all over history, to teach us the intricacies of power. When I stumbled on another book of his, Mastery , I ordered it without a second thought. The book is sheer delight. Once again, Greene gives us the lessons of mastery through real examples. We meet in this book Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein, Henry Ford and V S Ramachandran, and a score of other persons who were masters in their fields. We learn profound lessons from these masters. Each one of us is unique and has a unique r

The Taj Mahal is more a monument to romance than a mausoleum of royalty. What is life without romance? Romance makes life worth living. Romance adds colours to dark clouds. Clouds without colours are like religious preachers without eloquence. I visited the Taj for the first time before my hairs turned grey. Romance had not died in my heart in spite of the religious people around me with Modieqsue eloquence. It was the winter of 2000, almost four centuries after Shah Jahan planted his first kiss on the ruby lips of Mumtaz. The sweetness of the first kiss determines the lifespan of the wedlock. Kiss is a lock that needs no key. The Taj beckoned me again and again. I don’t think it was the architecture that lured me. I am no architect. Buildings don’t fascinate me. Poetry enchants me. The Taj is a poem. The Taj is the kiss of the infinite lover on eternity.   The poem of my life ten years after the photo above PS. Written for IndiSpire Edition 294: #Heritage .

Image from Psychology Today Envy is arguably the most universal human vice. There is hardly anyone who is not unhappy with the relative success of the next person. The tendency to compare ourselves with others is as natural to human beings as imitation is to apes. Do I look better than my colleague? Is my house more attractive than my neighbour’s? Does a colleague enjoy more reputation than me at workplace? Envy is a wide-ranging feeling. At the simplest or innocuous level, it can be a trigger for self-improvement. At the other extreme, it can destroy ourselves and others. If the success of another person makes you feel uncomfortable, you have a problem. If it prompts you to ascribe the success to sheer luck, political connections, or anything other than the person’s merit, then you have a serious problem. If it drives you to hate that person and do things that can damage him in any way, then your problem is hazardous and you need psychiatric treatment. Envy is universal

Do not sit up when others are lying down unless it is to keep their feet in your lap [Sorry, boys, this is just an illustration.] “You’re a hypocrite,” an old mate of mine told me a few months back when I criticised certain practices of a religious community in a WhatsApp group of hostel mates. “You criticise the community and yet work in an institution run by the community.” He was right. I left the WhatsApp group soon after that when I realised that there was an unbridgeable gap between most members there and me. But I didn’t leave my job. “I won’t be able to live without that much hypocrisy,” I explained to another friend who raised the same question this morning when he called me up to invite me to his daughter’s wedding. “Even a hospital in Kerala has a religion,” I said. There is no escape from certain facts and factors of the society. Hypocrisy is essential if you want to live in peace in any society. “ Think of the workplace as a kind of theatre in which you are al

I wanted to write a blog post today just to beat my blues. Words refused to rise in my veins. When words don’t flow out of your veins, they will sound hollow. So I shut down the laptop and moved out to the garden. The weeds had overgrown and they were smothering my garden plants, thanks to the recent rains. Weeds are like your blues: they love to smother whatever is good around them. I pulled up my jeans, put on the garden boots, picked up a knife and a pair of gloves, and stepped into the garden. An hour or so, and the weeds lay dead in green heaps that exuded their heady tang. I stood back and looked at the garden. My blues had vanished long ago. Despondence is a form of energy and I had unleashed it mercilessly on the weeds. The garden looked thankful. I relaxed a while breathing in the cool air that accompanied the setting sun. After a detailed shower, I switched on the laptop again. No. Words rebelled against my veins again. I wanted to continue the book which I have been