Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Online classes have entered the second week. The teacher sits at his home and the students at theirs. They are separated by distances of kilometres. Technology telescopes distances. Somebody is in Idukki, another in Thrissur, and a third one in Wayanad. At the scheduled time they all come together on the screen of a laptop, iPad or a smartphone. The teacher begins the class. Is Roger Skunk’s problem genuine? Roger says he can’t have friends if he keeps stinking like a skunk. Go away, not now, Stella says. What happened, Stella? Teacher asks. My cat, Sir. She wants to sit in my lap. You are a skunk, Mother tells Roger. And you should smell like a skunk. Teacher continues the class. A doorbell rings somewhere. Maybe in the hills of Idukki, could be off the backwaters of Kochi. A door opens and closes. Why can’t a skunk smell like roses? Roger questions Mother. Why should I walk around smelling like an open sewer all the time? Mother takes him by the arm

A cloud crouching in the yonder sky over a scorched field on a summer evening filled the peasant with more joy than the Burj Khalifa fountain gave to the ennui-filled tourist. The child’s elation on seeing the mother return home, The squirrel’s rush on spotting a nut among the blades of grass, The joy of the hawk whose mate call gets a response, The ecstasy of the surging tide on splashing violently against the sprawling beach, Da Vinci’s smile when the hammer hits a chromatic scale on his chosen block of marble, The sparkle of the dew on the morning’s tender leaf, The steam of the mint-tea in the evening’s armchair, Your smile as the day dies with a sigh of relief, The froth of soda in the iced whisky As the rain drummed madly a frenetic orchestra On the windows and the trees beyond. PS. Kicked up by Indispire Edition 324: Little things can make a lot of difference in life. How do you appreciate little things in life?   #lifemotivation

From Pinterest In the classical novel The Old Man and the Sea , Santiago – the old man who has endured much pain already – says, “Keep your head clear and know how to suffer like a man .” Suffering is an inevitable part of human existence. One of the many lessons that the Coronavirus disease is teaching us now is the inevitability of suffering. “This world of dew is a world of dew, And yet, and yet…” 18 th century haiku master, Kobayashi Issa, sang that. He had ample reasons to sing sad melodies. His mother died when he was just two. Later his first son died and before he could overcome that grief his father died of typhoid fever. And then his second son died followed by the death of his beloved daughter. Then he sang about the dewy evanescence of human life and its delights. Life wasn’t kind to him in spite of his songs. Another of his sons died after he wrote that poem on the world of dew. Then he was partly paralysed. Then his wife died in childbirth and that

Book Review Relationships add much beauty and meaning to life. Family ties play a vital role in keeping people happy especially in old age. The holiest of all relationships on earth must be the mother-child bond. The mother brings the child to the earth from her own body and feeds it also from her own body. For quite a protracted while, the infant is part of the mother. This bond is hard to break. If it does break, it leaves much debris and more scars. Ritu Lalit’s first non-fiction book, From Son to Stranger: Coping with Loneliness , is a poignant account of a mother-son relationship that went sour. What makes it heart-touching is that it is her own story told in the most candid manner possible. The elder of her two sons became estranged leaving a vacuum in the author’s psyche which she had to deal with in order to carry on with her life. The book is the story of what she did and what similarly estranged parents can do. A mother-child relationship undergoes a lot

Source: WHO About 800,000 people commit suicide every year in the world. That is, one person chooses to die every 40 seconds. More than 20 times that number are attempting suicide. This is not the statistics of one particular year. This is happening every year. Every second somebody somewhere on our planet is pulling the trigger on himself or consuming poison or slipping on the knot round the neck or… There are over 4,000 religions in the world. Between them they have over 10,000 gods [not counting the dead gods like Zeus and Isis or neglected ones like Indra]. Add to all these the countless religious cults that mushroom year after year. Isn’t something wrong somewhere? So many gods, so many religions, so many cults, and yet so many people losing hope and choosing death. Isn’t something seriously wrong somewhere? So many gods, so many religions, so many cults, and yet so many people dying of starvation in the world. Albert Einstein reportedly defined insani

Catastrophes bring lessons with them. But who cares to learn? There is always a small minority of people who think, understand and learn from what is happening around them. Even Covid-19 will teach its lessons only to them. The majority will remain as foolish as they were before the catastrophe. Look at what is happening in India if you don’t believe me. Almost everyday somebody or the other is being arrested or made to face some punitive action because Mr Narendra Modi doesn’t like him/her. The latest case is the show cause notice issued to Mohammad Mohsin IAS. The apparent reason is a tweet of his which said: “More than 300 Tablighi heroes are donating their plasma to serve the country in New Delhi only. What about it? Godi Media? They will not show you the works of humanity done by these heroes.” The actual reason: He had dared to check Modi’s helicopter last year during an election campaign.   A Reuters Headline: how the foreign media view India Last week journalis

Source: Positive Psychology I have envied people who go on as if nothing happened after they have been buffeted by the inevitable storms of life. They accept the tragic side of life just as a mountaineer accepts the unforeseen avalanches and crevasses on the way. There are many people who are apparently very ordinary but are greater heroes than mountaineers. The latter are embracing the adventure out for the thrill of it while the former are forced to face risk after risk just for survival. Imagine someone who can say, “My barn having burned down, I can now see the moon.” [17 th century Japanese poet Mizuta Masahide wrote that line. Poets suffer more than the actual farmer whose real barn burns down. But that’s a different matter.] I am no good at taking disappointments in my stride. I always wanted an easy life. Who doesn’t, right? Well, everyone wants it easy (except those crazy adventurers). Life is never easy, however. Life is like a vindictive god whose bloodlust is