Tomichan Matheikal's blog

  Who doesn’t want to be better and better? Self-improvement books sell in millions. Pop preachers and cult gurus attract hundreds of thousands of wellness-seekers. Most of us want to be better than what we are. Psychologically better if not in many other ways too. Self-improvement is not all that easy, however. We have deeply entrenched tendencies to shut our ears to all major truths about our real selves. That is why self-improvement is not easy. We would prefer to do almost anything other than take in information that can save us. We will climb tough peaks by way of pilgrimages in order to save ourselves. We will fast and do penance. Attend workshops and webinars. Join laughter clubs and listen to podcasts from masters. The path to self-improvement is tough, painful. In order to improve ourselves, we need first of all confront our fears about ourselves, our deepest selves. We need to stand face to face with our inner demons. The demons of jealousy and greed, lust for power and

  It was by sheer chance I met Sri Hanuman ji at the junction where history turned into many diversions. It wasn’t at all easy to recognise him since he had a mask on to protect himself from the overenthusiastic Kerala Police that impose heavy fines on people without masks. The Kerala government’s revenue was limited severely by the closure of liquor outlets and the lottery business. Mercifully, the central government kept on increasing the prices of petrol and diesel everyday like a sacred ritual so that the SGST kept coming in. Without that, what would the State do? Beg from Delhi? That would be of no use because Delhi was an alien capital these days with Lutyens’ history being rewritten by roaring earth movers. Aryan pride was wiping out both British and Mughal symbols from Bharatvarsha. It was not just the mask that made it difficult to recognise Hanuman ji. He had no tail. I asked him about that. “I never had a tail, man,” he said. “That tail was an honour added by Valmiki j

  Salman Rushdie grew up kissing books and bread before he could ever kiss a girl. The writer says that in his essay, ‘Is Nothing Sacred?’. It was a tradition in his household to pick up and kiss any food item or book that was dropped by mistake. “Bread and books: food for the body and food for the soul – what could be more worthy of our respect, and even love?” He asks. What can be more sacred than food and books? Trust. That is my answer to Rushdie’s question. I hold trust above everything else. Have you ever noticed that it is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend? That is because the enemy does not betray trust. The friend does. Trust is the very foundation of human relationships. Psychologist Erik Erikson places trust at the threshold of our psychological wellbeing. A person’s whole outlook is determined by the trust she is able to develop as she grows up and that ability to trust is built or crushed in the earliest days of childhood. A baby that receives prope

  The Dream of a Ridiculous Man is a short story by Dostoevsky. The narrator-protagonist is a total misfit in the human world. “Oh, how hard it is to be the only one who knows the truth!” He reflects. The truth he knows makes him a ridiculous man first and later a mad man. He knows that human life is absurd. That is the truth he knows. He is incapable of loving that life. He cannot accept the normal human jealousies, greed, mendacity, and so on. He is utterly frustrated and wants to kill himself. He buys a revolver and wants to fire the bullet right into his brain. One day, while walking towards home in the night contemplating suicide, a little girl of eight tugs at his elbow frantically. The girl’s mother is in some danger and wants urgent help. The girl looks absolutely miserable wearing tattered clothes and torn shoes. The protagonist does not feel any sympathy for the girl. He pushes the girl away and walks off. At home, the girl rises in his consciousness. He wonders why

  Image from ShutterStock Historically a pandemic has 3 types of ends. One, medical end which implies that the disease does not spread any more. Two, social end which happens when life returns to normal. And the last is political which is decided by the government.   Obviously, it is the first kind that matters. And that end seems quite distant as of now. There is a lot of movement of people even now, including international journeys. That makes it a big challenge for medical science to contain the virus. People will have to acquire natural immunity to the virus if a medical end to the pandemic has to arrive. The vaccines are meant to bring about that immunity. Some may develop immunity by contracting the disease and overcoming it. A few may develop the immunity internally. There is also the possibility of the virus weakening due to various reasons and eventually disappearing. Science has observed that the rate at which a pandemic moves towards its peak is the same as the rate of

  Book Review Title: She and Other Poems Author: Huma Masood Format: PDF E-book Carl Sandburg defined poetry as an echo asking a shadow to dance. Good poetry is a dance of words. No, not really words but images and metaphors. Take this haiku, for example:             A flower stung me             One bright, beautiful morning             Shocked, I hear a buzz. This is from Huma Masood’s collection under review. Most of her poems have that stunning effect on the reader. The effect comes largely from the images and metaphors that the poet employs dexterously. Huma has a scintillating imagination. While too many poets of our day rely on what Coleridge calls ‘fancy’, Huma is blessed with an imagination whose creative intensity can aesthetically shape and unify experiences. This is the secret of the power of her poetry. Let me give one more example. Here is another haiku titled ‘Unspoken Words’:        Louder than the noise        Graceful, intense, deafening    

  Prufrock is the poet persona in T S Eliot’s ‘ The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock ’ . Like most characters created by Eliot, Prufrock is a fragmented psyche.   He lives in a world where authentic personal commitments don’t seem quite possible. The “one-night cheap hotels” give you “restless nights”.   In more serious places you’ll meet women coming and going talking of Michelangelo. There are lonely men in shirt-sleeves leaning out of windows, not particularly curious about the meaning of the smoke that rises from their pipes. Prufrock has his own mask in place, ready to meet other masks. Prufrock wants to commit himself to something deeper than the restless nights, smoking pipes, and discussions that sound intellectual. But he is helpless. “Do I dare?” He asks himself many times. He doesn’t. He can’t. He is helpless. Imagine Prufrock in contemporary India’s half-deserted streets where dreams die by the second. There is the pandemic. And there is a government. Is there really?