Tomichan Matheikal's blog

  Image  Creator: Max Slaven  Copyright: Street Level Photoworks This morning broke with two messages about Muslims in India. The first was Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar’s article in the Times of India and the other was a WhatsApp message. Both reveal an acute concern of non-Muslims about the backwardness of Muslims in India and the problems engendered by that backwardness. Aiyar’s article is an open letter to Asaduddin Owaisi who recently lamented the pathetic condition of Indian Muslims vis-à-vis education. Aiyar rightly argues that the Muslims must help themselves in this matter as the Christians did long ago. “Instead of depending on the state,” Aiyar writes, “Christians have long created their own educational institutions of excellence.” Even today, when Ram Raj is enforcing itself on the nation, Christian educational institutions remain in high demand among non-Christians. “Hindus and Muslims pull all possible strings to get into them,” says Aiyar. The Muslim community

  Image Source: India.com Kerala is celebrating Onam, the grandest festival of the state. Onam is a festival of colours, flowers, music and abundance. In my childhood, Onam was projected as a harvest festival thus making it absolutely secular. The mythical legend of Mahabali (or Maveli as he was popularly and affectionately called by Malayalis) played relatively little role in the actual celebrations. The festive mood tended to supersede the legend though images of a pot-bellied Maveli made their presence felt ubiquitously. Perhaps people aren’t too keen to scrutinise the Maveli legend because the legend doesn’t put the gods in any good light. Maveli is an Asura (demon) king who turns out to be far better than the gods. The gods, therefore, become jealous of him and an avatar of Vishnu descends to decimate the beloved king of the humans. In her scholarly book, The Hindus – An Alternative History , Wendy Doniger says that the relationships between humans, gods, and asuras in the h

  Book Review Title: The Mirror & the Light Author: Hilary Mantel Publisher: 4 th Estate, London, 2020 Pages: 883 Price in India: 799   The first two volumes of Hilary Mantel’s trilogy told us the story of Thomas Cromwell’s rise from a hamlet of Putney to Henry VIII’s palace. The battered son of an uncultured blacksmith and brewer rises to become the most powerful person in England after the king. The first two volumes, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies , described the rise of this shrewd manipulator. The last one, The Mirror & the Light , delineates the inevitable fall of the tragic hero. Mantel’s undertaking seems to be to show us that Cromwell was indeed a tragic hero rather than a mere manipulator who ascended too high. She does that job eminently too. This last volume of the trilogy is as gripping as the other two if not more endearing by its slower pace and more poetic diction. Nearly hundred characters are brought together in this massive book to tell u

  Vis: image from The Guardian Like poet Yeats I too long for Innisfree . Unlike him, however, I am not in search of peace. I want to see some places and have a different experience of life. Both India, my country, and Kerala, the state where I live, have disappointed me terribly. India has been swallowed by the hydra-headed monster of sectarianism. Every institution in the country including the judiciary has been converted into one of those many heads of the vicious monster. Kerala was doing pretty well until recently when one woman called Swapna emerged as a phantasmagorical nightmare that roams the corridors of power in the state. Moreover, the Covid pandemic has kept me home for too long shrinking my horizons pathetically. I want to be in some place like Yeats’s Innisfree: with water lapping with low sounds by the shore on one side and mountains towering like seductive sirens on the other. What about Vis in Croatia? Croatia is a relatively unpolluted place. Tourists haven’t don

 ഓടുന്ന പട്ടിക്ക് ഒരു മുഴം മുന്നേ എന്നാണ് ചൊല്ല്. ചൊല്ലിയവരും ചൊല്ല് കേട്ടവരും എറിയാൻ കല്ലുകളും വടികളുമായി ഏറെ നാളായി കാത്തിരിക്കുകയായിരുന്നു ഒരു പട്ടി വന്നു കിട്ടാൻ. അങ്ങനെയിരിക്കെയാണ് അവർക്കു മത്തായിച്ചനെ കിട്ടുന്നത്.  ജീവിതത്തിൽ എല്ലാം ഉണ്ടായിട്ടും എന്തോ ഒന്ന് ഇല്ല എന്ന ഒരു ബൗദ്ധിക ഉൾകിടിലം മത്തായിച്ചന് എങ്ങനെയോ വന്നുപോയി. അങ്ങേരുടെ ഗതികേട് എന്നല്ലാതെ എന്ത് പറയാൻ? നല്ല ഒരു ജോലി, സ്നേഹിതയായ ഒരു ഭാര്യ, തരക്കേടില്ലാത്ത വീട്, സമർത്ഥരായ രണ്ടു കുട്ടികൾ,അങ്ങനെ ഏതൊരു യാഥാസ്ഥിക വീക്ഷണ കോണിൽ നിന്ന് നോക്കിയാലും തെറ്റ് പറയാനില്ലാത്ത ജീവിതം. എന്നിട്ടും ഒരു സുപ്രഭാതത്തിൽ അങ്ങേരെ ബുദ്ധൻ പിടി കൂടി.  ഷേക്സ്പിയർ ആണ് പിടി കൂടിയതെന്നു ചിലര് പറയുന്നു. "Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" എന്നാണത്രെ മത്തായിച്ചൻ ആ ദുഷ്പ്രഭാതത്തിൽ ആദ്യമായി മൊഴിഞ്ഞത്. പക്ഷെ മത്തായിച്ചന്റെ പരവേശം ഹാംലെറ്റിന്റെ അനിശ്ചിതത്വം അല്ലായിരുന്നു എന്നാണ് അങ്ങേരുടെ ഭാര്യ പറയുന്നത്. വെളിപാടിന് വേണ്ടിയുള്ള ബുദ്ധന്റെ പരാക്രമം പോലെയായിരുന്നത്രെ മത്തായിച്ചന്റെ പരിവർത്തനത്തിന്റെ ആദ്യദിനങ്ങൾ.

  Jacob, one of the biblical patriarchs, is forced to flee home in order to escape the wrath of his brother Esau whom he cheated rather meanly with ample assistance from his mother. Jacob finds shelter at his uncle Laban’s house where he falls in love with Rachel, Laban’s daughter. Laban promises to give his daughter in marriage to Jacob in return for 7 years’ of labour. Love can make you do anything, even embrace a 7-year slavery. At the end of the seven years, Laban cheats Jacob. The bride was led to Jacob’s dark tent in the night as was the custom. The marriage was consummated in the fire of a passion that had burnt for seven years. It is only in the light of the morning that Jacob realises the deception perpetrated by his uncle: he was given the ugly Leah instead of the beautiful Rachel. Laban makes Jacob work for him for another seven years in order to marry his real love, Rachel. Referring to this grim episode from the holy book, Arthur Koestler wrote: “I wonder whether he (J

India has ascetics who can pull a car with their penises. India also has software engineers whose brains are put to good use by the world’s finest IT firms. There was a time when India built hospitals and universities. Now India builds statues and temples. Slogans had meanings in India until recently when they began to be exasperating echoes of pious wishes. The independence of a nation is nothing more than the independence of its citizens. No nation can be said to be independent if even a fraction of its citizens are facing starvation, injustice, discrimination, and other such evils. No nation can be said to be free if its citizens are labouring under illusions and delusions, superstitions and ignorance, bigotry and sectarianism. Is India really independent today, more than seven decades after our first Prime Minister hoisted the national flag proudly proclaiming to the world our historic tryst with destiny? True, even the first Independence Day wasn’t all that glorious. The fat