Tomichan Matheikal's blog

One of the biggest hurdles I face when I want to go wandering is that no matter where I go I have to take myself along – and that spoils everything. Maggie doesn’t mind, of course. She has got used to it. It’s I who am to reconcile with it yet. When I was young, a teacher of mine compared me to a tiny bird that used to be found commonly in Kerala. I don’t know its English name. In Malayalam, it was known as thuthukulukki pakshi – literally, ass-shaking bird. Its posterior would always be shaking whenever it was resting in any place. The teacher who discovered the analogy between the ass-shaker and me explained that the little bird assumed that the world moved because it shook its ass. Another teacher compared me to a hen. You know, the hen always crows loud after laying the egg as if it had just worked a miracle. I had a big ego, in other words. And I had gracious teachers who did their best to rein it in. But I guess I was like the hen scratching around in the stall of a huge

Zorba the Greek is one of the most fascinating fictional characters that I have ever come across. Though he is in his 60s, his passion for life is still youthful. He loves music and dance, wine and women, hard work and quiet sleep. He doesn’t look any different from the man next door. But he is different. He is enlightened. Religion and philosophy don’t appeal to him. They are absurd, according to him. What can a god mean in a world of injustices, cruelty and untold pain? What does the wisdom of the philosopher amount to in front of the beauty of a lily or the gurgle of a mountain brook? Cast your gods and your wisdom into the sea, Zorba would say, and listen to the rhythm of the waves if you want to enjoy life. Life is not to be understood by philosophy and theology. Life is to be enjoyed every moment. Every moment, yes, up to your grave. Enjoy not only your food and wine but also the work you do. And don’t try to understand too much of anything. “You understand,” he admonishes

  O King, I'm your court poet. “An ounce of honey gathers more flies than a barrel of vinegar.” I think it was from one of those Dale Carnegie books that this sentence sprang straight into my face when I was a young man. The sentence carried all the tang and sweetness of honey for me. Until the flies in the sentence began to buzz around my thoughts. “Why gather flies?” I wondered. That sort of wondering was a grievous error. You can’t win friends and influence people if you start wondering about the worth of flies. In fact, that little fly hovering above the stray zinnia that is growing on the side of the drain channel may have something vital to teach you. Nothing is insignificant. That is a fundamental axiom for success in life. Appreciate the fly and the zinnia and even the drain. When Mahatma Gandhi exhorted us not to be drain inspectors, this is just what he meant: don’t look at the filth in the drain, see the zinnia instead. Discover the charms of the fly too, if you wa

  Idealism devastated Keats’s knight in the poem ‘ La Belle Dame Sans Merci .’ I imagine the knight as a charming young man until he met Beauty on the hillside. The young woman whom he met on the hillside was the personification of the ideal beauty for the knight. But that ideal beauty was as good as an illusion. It vanished sooner than it had gratified the knight’s quest. However, once you taste the ideal it is hard to be contented with anything less. The knight spent the rest of his life in quest of that ideal beauty. It was a futile quest, however. He squandered a lifetime on an unavailing quest because he failed to understand that the ideals belong to an illusory world. Keats was a Romantic poet. The Romantic quest is essentially a quest for the ideal form of everything. The Romantics have powerful imaginations which conjure up paradises and hanker after them. Worse, they judge all given reality against those conjured up ideals. Shelley, another Romantic poet, wrote that “Hel

Whoever said that the third world war will be for water will shudder if he sees Kerala's Kuttanad these days. Large areas of arable land went under water for the umpteenth time after the recent rains. Even the Alappuzha-Changanassery Road [AC Road, as it is known] was submerged for days. When I travelled from Changanassery toward Alappuzha yesterday, many parts of the AC Road were still under water though vehicles were plying on it.  AC Road I went there - the Venice of the East - to attend the funeral of a relative whose life was taken by the flood water. He was just a year older than me and had been a very energetic and healthy farmer until the waters that had inundated his paddy fields gave him a cardiac arrest. His entire labour of months had been ravaged by incessant rains. The paddy was just ripe for harvest but the rains devastated it.  Submerged paddy fields On the way, I saw many signboards with the offer of land and houses for sale. The people of Kuttanad want to leave th

Reverend Lawrence was driving to the charity home run by a group of aging nuns. It was his duty to say the holy mass that Sunday morning for the nuns and the hundred-odd inmates of their charity home. On the way, right in front of his car, a scooter skidded and the rider fell down. It was obvious that the rider required some help. Rev Lawrence looked at his watch. He had no time. It was his duty to begin the mass at the given time in the charity home after which he had to attend a solemn meeting at his monastery, again at a given time. He ignored the man lying on the road and concentrated on the sermon on kindness that he would be delivering soon during the mass. “Even if you speak the language of the angels, but do not have kindness in your heart, you are only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal,” his sermon began. The fundamental message of Our Lord is kindness. Be good even to your enemy. The sermon went on. Rev Lawrence was not a wicked man. Far from it, he was a very reli

  Nehru was arrested on the Prime Minister's order. "Why the hell do you continue to haunt people's hearts?" The Prime Minister fulminated.  We removed you from textbooks and history , We painted you black in posters, We removed your names from roads and institutions. Why the hell don't you vanish yet? Nehru smiled and said nothing.  Why do you kick me up from my resting place again and again,  He wanted to ask. But he was wise. The silence exasperated the Prime Minister More than the smile.  Silence is treason when you are asked questions, The Prime Minister thundered.  It was time for him to groom himself for Mann ki Baat.  Arrest him under UAPA, The Prime Minister ordered Before going to address children on their day. One child was fidgety in the audience In spite of being selected after detailed screening. The Prime Minister stared at the child And a black cat commando picked up the child By the scruff... Nehru and the child played gilli danda i n the prison W