Tomichan Matheikal's blog

  Lawrence Alma-Tadema 's water-colour of an ambivalent Pandora, 1881 Hope was the last item in a box of evils, in Greek mythology. When Prometheus stole fire from the gods for the sake of human beings, Zeus (king of the gods) took revenge by sending Pandora to the earth with a box that contained all the evils. The last item in the box was hope. Interestingly, hope does not escape from the box while all the (other) evils did because Pandora closed the lid on realising that she was condemned to bring evils to the human world. The story has found numerous interpretations. Is hope yet another evil? The ultimate evil? Or is it retained in the box because human beings are condemned to live without its benefits? Did the gods want frustration to be the human lot? Why did they then put hope into the box in the first place? Well, we can go on asking any number of questions when we are dealing with myths and scriptures. Let us be more realistic and look at our given situations. “Hope

  Book Review Title: And All the Seasons in Between Author: Arti Jain Format: PDF Ebook This is a unique book which magically blends a fairy world with the real one. “Surrounded by High Mountains of Himalayas in the north and Shivalik Hills in the south, lay a valley called Doon,” it begins. The author spent her childhood in that valley and the book is her nostalgic reminiscence of those innocent childhood days with her grandparents who, in the words of the author, “filled my world with love and magic”. The book is suffused with that love and magic. Each chapter (with the exception of one or two) begins with an episode from the life of a little girl named Artemis who lives partly in the fairy world with a dragonfly for a companion. Her dream is to be “the Most Green Gardener of all times”. Her parents were “the Beekeepers of the Valley” who keep half the honey for the bees. It is man’s divine obligation to make sure that the bees never go hungry. Artemis grows up in that

  LIFE: 24 Essays is my latest book. All the essays in it were originally published in this same blog as part of the A-to-Z challenge hosted by Blogchatter. The essays look at life from the viewpoints of philosophy, literature, psychology and religion. Some editing has been done to the blog posts in order to make this book more coherent and systematic. The book is available absolutely free here . I take this opportunity to thank the Blogchatter Team which takes much pain to get bloggers to produce quality writing, organise it into standard books, and make the books available at their website with due publicity. Their enthusiasm and elan vital went long way to sustain the writer in me. Last year it produced another book, Great Books for Great Thoughts , which is available here . Again absolutely free . This book introduces the reader to 26 great works of literature starting with Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man and ending with Kazantzakis’s Zorba the Greek . For obvious reasons,

  When Rohan said he wanted to make a card each for all the boys and girls in his class, his mother was worried. He was a shy little boy of the fourth grade who had no friends worth mentioning. Even when the classes were real in the school, he never made a friend. He wouldn't talk to anyone. He just didn't know how to, what to talk to friends. Teachers thought that he was either a potential genius (a polite way of saying he was plainly abnormal) or just a dimwit (which nobody said loud). Then Covid-19 made the classes virtual and Rohan didn't miss any class though he hardly made his presence felt.  Now his class teacher says they're going to celebrate the friendship day online. "Each one of you should make friendship cards for your friends. If you have one friend, make one card. If you have ten friends, make ten..." One card for each friend. And then the students will display the cards in the virtual classroom and thus declare their friendships.  Rohan's m

  Bjornsterne Bjornsen [1832-1910] won the Nobel for literature in 1903. ‘The Father’ is one of his short stories published in 1881. It tells the story of a peasant named Thord Overass who brings up his son with all the affection and luxury that he can afford. When the boy is born, Thord arranges a special baptism for him. The priest’s blessing on the occasion is: “God grant that the child may become a blessing to you.” The child grows up as the apple of the father’s eye. The father ensures that the boy receives the best of everything including public attention. Finally when he grows up to be an eligible bachelor, the father arranges his marriage with the richest girl in the parish. The father and son were making the arrangements for the marriage. One day they had to row across the lake. The father warned the son to be careful because the boat’s thwart was not quite in good shape. Just as the father warned the young man, an accident happened. The board on which the boy was standing

  Modi admiring himself at Madame Tussauds Narendra Modi is a coward and a weakling. Otherwise he would not get people arrested for as flimsy reasons as putting up posters that read: “ Modi ji hamare bachon ki vaccine videsh kyon bhej diya (Why did you send our children’s vaccines abroad?)” A lot of people have been arrested in India from 2014 for criticising Modi. Many have had their offices raided by various central government agencies or harassed in surreptitious ways. A few have even disappeared. Who is Mr Modi scared of? India’s first Prime Minister was a man who warned the nation against his own potential for dictatorship. In 1937, an article published in Modern Review described the then president of the Congress (Jawaharlal Nehru) as having “all the makings of a dictator in him – vast organisational capacity, ability, hardness, and, with all his love of the crowd, an intolerance of others and a certain contempt for the weak and the inefficient.” The article was written by

  Reality is like a hologram. Its appearance keeps changing as your viewing angle changes. What to say about its meaning if even the appearance is not fixed? The meaning of reality similarly changes depending on from which mental position you see it. Take the example of a vagabond you see in a street corner in the town. You may think of him as a lazy lout, a thief, a potential rapist, an escaped prisoner, an unfortunate hungry man… Your perception depends largely on your own attitudes and mental makeup. Psychologist Erik Erikson says that an infant which grows up receiving consistent, predictable and reliable care from parents or significant others will develop a sense of trust which will mark their relationships with people eventually. Such children are likely to become adults with healthy attitudes towards other people as well as life. On the other hand, an infant that is deprived of such care will develop a sense of mistrust, suspicion and anxiety. It will grow up and become a m