Tomichan Matheikal's blog

  Does the government exist for the people or do the people exist for the sake of the government? As my country ‘celebrated’ the fifth anniversary of Modi’s demonetisation exercise yesterday, this question about government-for-people or people-for-government arose in my mind. Soon after Modi became the Prime Minister in 2014, India’s wealth started moving into the hands of a few billionaires. There were just 9 billionaires in India in 2000. But Modi’s magic raised the figure rapidly and it became 101 in 2017. Oxfam India estimates that between 2018 and 2022 India is producing 70 new millionaires every day. On the other hand, millions of Indians are deprived of basic needs like food, shelter and medicine. Oxfam says that 63 million Indians are pushed into poverty every year now by mounting healthcare costs. Modi lives life king-size. His residence in Lutyens’ Delhi (which he loathed before becoming PM) is a five-mansion palace with countless chefs, housekeepers, gardeners, and o

  Book Review This novel consists of the reflections of a 76-year-old Congregationalist minister (a Christian priest, for those who are not familiar with the Christian denominations). His days are numbered due to an illness, and he wants to leave something by which his 7-year-old son will remember him when the latter grows up. This novel is his diary written for his son. John Ames, the minister, was born in 1880. His life has been a witness to the essentially tragic nature of human life: “the droughts and the influenza and the Depression and three terrible wars.” How do we make sense of so much evil? John Ames has been delivering sermons every week for 45 years to help people discover not just meaning but the very joy and beauty of life. He has kept the texts of all those sermons which would be equal to some 225 books – “which puts (him) up there with Augustine and Calvin for quantity.” He wrote all of them “in the deepest hope and conviction.” But today, when he looks back at th

Let the lamps remain different This is the seventh Diwali of mine in succession without any Diwali lamps anywhere in the neighbourhood. I live in a region of India where Diwali is not celebrated. Like most villages in Kerala, mine too does not celebrate Diwali though half its population is Hindu. This indifference to Diwali doesn’t signify anything more than the cultural diversity of India. Even the Hinduism in this country has more shades than the advocates of a monolithic Hindutva are ready to acknowledge. One of the most beautiful aspects of India is its cultural diversity. The North-east is nothing like any other part of the country. Their foods, dresses, languages, and even physical appearances are an amazing contrast to those in the other parts of the country. The differences in the other parts (such as between north and south) may not be so highly accentuated but they are far too many to be accommodated comfortably in any system or ideology that ventures to homogenize them.

Dr Jose Maliekal SDB   Dr Jose Maliekal SDB is a thinker, professor of philosophy, social activist and a Catholic priest. He has written a book, Standstill Utopias , based on his doctoral thesis. His observations on reality tend to be keen and profound. Hence his views on my writings are of much significance to me personally. He has been magnanimous with his review of my novel, Black Hole   and I am thrilled to present the review below.  ***** Literature is an introduction to where and how we live and the challenges that face our time and society. In many ways, literature is an introduction to who we are, or ought to be, as people. It helps us to be ‘critical insiders” to borrow a leaf from U.R. Ananthamurthy, a doyen of Indian literature (Kunal Ray, The Purpose of Literature , https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-purpose-of-literature/article36167231.ece ). Being a critical insider would mean not being a spectator to all what is going on around us. As human beings, we are just

"Rising heat in the 21st century is likely to push millions of people and entire regions out of their comfort zones," warned The National Geographic magazine a few months back. The earth is witnessing phenomenal rises in atmospheric temperatures.  The summer of 2003 scorched the planet. France experienced a temperature of 40 degree Celsius for eight consecutive days. 15,000 people died in that country because of the heat wave. It was Europe's hottest summer in 500 years and it took a toll of 70,000 lives in that continent.  The last six years have been the warmest ever recorded globally. It is not just about temperature. There are other disastrous consequences like hurricanes, drought, rising sea levels and sporadic wildfires.  The heat affects the people's psyche too. Exhaustion due to heat can make people highly temperamental. It has been found that hotter weather leads to more violence and crime. It lowers children's creativity. Overall productivity shrinks tre

  Hamlet is on a stroll in Lucknow. It is his leisure time. He has come quite a distance from Kalidas Marg where he has been undergoing specialised training from none other than Yogi Adityanath himself. Claudius and Gertrude had sent him over when all their attempts to teach him the quintessential deviousness and venality of practical life failed. “There’s nothing like the East for this,” Kipling told Claudius when the latter complained about Hamlet’s refusal to understand politics. It was Kipling who suggested Yogi Adityanath in particular. “No one can do better than him the art and craft of putting on sanctity and putting out sanity. They call it rajneeti.” Dead bodies of human beings were floating in the Ganga when Hamlet landed in the land of yogis and sadhus. And once upon a time fakirs too. I mean land of fakirs once upon a time. Not dead bodies. Well, I’m not so sure anymore. Dead bodies, yogis, fakirs… Prime Minister Modi was stuck in Delhi unable to go on his habitua

I was immensely fascinated by an interview published in a recent edition of a Malayalam weekly. ‘I’m a little grain of sand in this world’ is the title of the interview. And that is spoken by the interviewee who is M K Sanu, well-known Malayalam writer, orator, social activist and a retired professor. Right in the beginning of the interview, the 95-year-old man says that he is a contented person. The humility in the titular quote and the sense of contentment that was palpable in the man’s words kept me glued to the interview to the last word. Here I wish to focus on that contentment which is something I would love to acquire as I’m moving rapidly towards the last stage of a person’s psychological development in Erikson’s theory. Psychologist Erik Erikson would certainly approve of Prof Sanu who, at the age of 95, can confidently claim that he is contented with what he has done in his life. Sanu thinks that what really made his life worthwhile is the service he did for fellow human