Tomichan Matheikal's blog

  A genuine leader liberates his followers. He leads them to the discovery of their potential, enables them to unfold their greatness, and thus creates a noble place of noble people. Bad leaders divide people into belligerent groups in the name of gods or cultures or languages or anything at all. Good leaders want a better world. Bad leaders want political power. Good leaders live in the present. Bad leaders live in history. Without history, where will the nationalist and the patriot set their feet? Without history, where will the soldier stand for shooting at and for being shot at? It is history that creates politics which in turn creates power, says the Minister of Sorrows in O V Vijayan’s apocalyptic novel, The Saga of Dharmapuri , originally published in Malayalam in 1977. The Minister is lecturing about the importance of history to Lavanya, a maidservant, whom he is disrobing while his own wife is being disrobed by the President. “Without power, can I disrobe you whene

  First edition of the novel, 1887 From Wikipedia The first Sherlock Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet , has a religion at its centre: Mormonism. A wealthy American Enoch Drebber and his secretary Joseph Stangerson are both murdered in quick succession in London. Sherlock Holmes soon identifies the murderer Jefferson Hope. The murders were acts of revenge. Drebber and Stangerson had caused the untimely death of Lucy Ferrier whom Hope was to marry. They had also killed Lucy’s father, John. Both Drebber and Stangerson are top leaders of the Mormon religion followed by all the settlers in Salt Lake City. John Ferrier was not a Mormon but lived like one because he had no choice. He detested certain practices of the religious sect like polygamy and the authoritarianism of the religious leaders called prophets. Both Drebber and Stangerson wish to marry Lucy though they already have many wives. John and Lucy run away from the place with Jefferson’s help. They were being guarded heavily and

Sitharaam Jayakumar Sitharaam Jayakumar is one of the few bloggers who caught my attention many years ago. His writings have a touch of genuineness that one rarely comes across nowadays. They suggested to me a charming personality that is a rare blend of  forthrightness and meekness. But his fiction pieces gave me another impression altogether. I met him personally once for a favour and he struck me as an ideal human being: a personification of authenticity and magnanimity. I think he is one of the many good people in the world that need be brought into some limelight. Especially in today's India where all wrong people seem to grab the spotlights.  Over to Sitharaam Jayakumar who is known among his friends as Jai and the rather silly me whom Jai calls Tom.  Tom: You have been an active blogger for quite some time. What brought you into blogging? Jai : There is quite an interesting story behind how I ended up in the blogosphere. It all began on the founding day function of the org

  From the Facebook timeline of a friend Sunday musings The Congress is becoming like the BJP day by day. The lead headline of today’s Times of India reads: “ Congress moots law to block women’s entry in Sabarimala ”. “Females aged between 10 and 50 were traditionally not allowed to enter the shrine…” The report goes. The deity at Sabarimala was a celibate. His chastity will face potential threats if women in the menstruating age group appear before him! Since gods have always remained beyond my understanding, I shall not enter into the subtleties and logicalities of divine erections and predilections. The Congress is determined to preserve tradition, if not the god’s chastity. The truth is that the party is trying to woo Hindu voters some of whom at least are enchanted by the intoxications of neo-nationalism. The Congress is playing the same religious card that the BJP plays rather shamelessly. Shameless because everybody – even the child on the sidelines – knows that all the bro

  “If you were not you, who would you like to be?” This week’s Indispire asks. I find the question rather tickling. First of all, I don’t like me at all. Whenever I have been asked what my biggest disappointment in life was/is, my answer has invariably been, “My birth”. When I say that I am accused of negativity and pessimism and all sorts of wickedness. But the Buddha said very much the same thing when he defined life as pain. I think Jesus detested life even more than the Buddha so much so that he drove himself to the cross. I’m not placing myself on a par with these two great beings, of course. God forbid! But would I like to be one of them since I don’t like me myself? That’s the question, isn’t it? Being Jesus is no option at all. I am a hedonist and the cross is my bête noire. The kind of beggarliness that the Buddha practised would never appeal to me. So he’s out too. I admire them though. Unlike them, I like abundance. Good food and drinks, beautiful surroundings, world tou

  Dog Ross by June Huff Fiction Samson was irritated. There were too many missed calls on his mobile phone when he came back to the staff room during the break. Almost all the missed calls were from father-in-law. The son-of-a-bitch! Samson had no choice but call back. After all, his wife was his last hope, the ultimate redeemer. Samson worked as a teacher in a private school which paid him and all other teachers a salary that couldn’t meet even a week’s expenditure of a normal family with four or five members. Not that he didn’t try for other jobs. All good jobs were meant for people with some connections: wives of MLAs or nephews and nieces of Catholic priests and nuns or followers of people who claim to be political leaders… Finally Samson hit upon an idea for the sake of survival and possibly success in life. Marry a nurse and leave the country with her. Nurses get jobs abroad easily. Eventually their husbands can be transported too. “You’ll be working at some petrol pum

Some places retain their pristine beauty in spite of human presence. Ezhattumukham is one such place just 12 km from Cochin International Airport. Literally the name of the place means the mouth of seven rivers. Maybe in the heyday of Kerala's monsoon, one could see those seven debouches clearly. What I saw the other day, when I landed there rather by chance along with Maggie, is an elaborate spread of granite boulders and chains of rocks with puddles of water in between. Of course, the river is dammed up keeping all the water on the other side and channeling part of it for irrigation.  The place has a quaint charm even with all those rocks and boulders. As Alice Walker said, in nature nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Even the contorted trees with all their bizarre bends and twists have a perfection that arrests your attention. Those contortions can tell you stories. Some of those stories will resonate with your own inner distortions.  A hanging bridge connects the opp