Tomichan Matheikal's blog

A huge tree being eaten up by parasitic climbers - Bhoothathankettu “Forest eats forest,” our guide said dramatically. We, the staff of the school where I teach, were on an outing to the Bhoothathankettu dam and reserved forest. He was pointing at a parasitic climber on a mammoth tree. “This climber will kill this tree though the tree is so huge and the climber so small in comparison,” he said. “You may ask why not destroy the climber and save the tree.” He paused for dramatic effect. He was an excellent storyteller. “He would have made a good literature teacher,” I whispered to one of the teacher-colleagues standing by my side and she agreed instantly. “This is one of the laws of forests: forest eats forest.” He explained that everything in the forest survives by eating something else in the forest. The tiger eats the deer. The deer eats the grasses, leaves and shoots. And some plants eat other plants. I have always had a problem with that reality. One of the many dramatic quest

Enlightenment is losing the world and gaining the universe. That doesn’t mean that you get out of the world as the ascetics in the Himalayas do. On the contrary, enlightenment takes you deep into the world. Enlightenment enables you to see the world more clearly. You see the connectedness between everything. Nobody is your enemy now. Swami Vivekananda was an enlightened person. Swami Vivekananda is often projected by India’s right wing as a champion crusader of Hinduism. His Chicago speech is cited as an example for his claims on the superiority of Hinduism. The truth, however, is that Vivekananda had an enlightened approach to reality. Let us look at his stand on Christianity for example. Vivekananda translated The Imitation of Christ into Bengali. The Imitation is a Christian devotional book which gives practical guidelines on spirituality while it also serves as a meditation book. It is based entirely on the life of Jesus. In an article published in a special edition of Th

Image from Pexels Deserts are deceptive places. They will show you water where there is only sun-baked sand. Whole mountains will shift from once place to another within minutes; the winds will carry the sands and deposit them elsewhere. There are no roads or landmarks. You have to find your way on your own. You need expert guides if you want to cross the desert safely. Even Ibn Battuta had guides when he navigated deserts. His guide in the Sahara charged no less than a thousand mithqals of gold. It is said that the blind made the best guides in the desert. Eyesight was delusive on the infinite stretches of sand. Your eyes show you things that don’t exist. The blind see better there. They have the desert in their veins. They know the tangs in the air. They feel the tunes of the winds in their pulses. They see clearly without eyes. The wisdom of Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s Little Prince tells us that what is essential is invisible to the eye. It is only with the heart that you see

R G Collingwood, professor of metaphysics, regards civilisation as an attitude which enables ideal social relationships of ‘civility’.   In practice, this means becoming progressively less violent, more scientific and more inclusive. This never happens, though. Most people remain savages at heart. Scratch any civilisation and savagery will bleed out. If there is a little support from the government, even tacit support, then savagery will become the dominant force in any nation. Savagery appeals far more to people in general than civilisation. Let us take a quick glance at what is happening to India now. Both the society and the polity in India have been transformed into sites of discursive and physical violence, increasing fidelity to myths and superstitions, and burgeoning hatred of certain communities – just the opposite of what Collingwood described as characteristics of civilisation. This situation is largely a creation of the government at the Centre which is doing all th

Bhatti Mines is a metaphor for the redundancy of ordinary people for both governments and religions. Bhatti Mines is a village in Delhi. It lies between Mehrauli (where the Qutub Minar is situated) and Faridabad (Haryana’s industrial hub with conspicuous opulence) on the Delhi-Haryana border with reserved forests all around it. All along the road from Mehrauli to Bhatti Mines you will find symbols of affluence: imposing gates that are guarded by security personnel. Some of those gates open to sprawling farms with luxurious farmhouses. A few lead you to spectacular edifices belonging to various religious cults. The last stretch of the road is through a reserved forest and then suddenly it ends in a village that seemingly belongs to another planet. That village is Bhatti Mines. The name owes itself to the stone quarries that existed in that area for about 25 years: 1965-1990. Red sand, silica and stones for the construction industry in the National Capital Region were mined from th

In yet another instance of history’s inexorable vindictiveness, Allah was driven out of Prayagraj on 16 Oct 2018. Allahabad became Prayagraj with the single stroke of a pen. The pen is mightier than the sword if it is wielded by a mighty hand. Might is what matters. It is what mattered from time immemorial. Every war is born of someone’s desire to impose himself, his might, on others. War can be in the form of name changes. Changing the name of a place is to erase its history. Changing the name of a place is to erase a whole people from that place. Place names, animal totems, dress colours or styles – they can all be weapons of mass destruction. Nothing really changes except names, totems and dresses. Crime rates don’t change. Poverty levels don’t. Political corruption and chicanery don’t. Even after Allah wad driven out, the state of Uttar Pradesh has remained the same, if not became worse , on the various parameters that determine social progress and cultural development. One thi

Mansiya Mohan Bhagwat, RSS Supremo, has decided that there are no more non-Hindus in India . All Indians are Hindus hereafter. They are classified into 4: (1) the proud Hindu, (2) the reluctant Hindu, (3) the unfriendly Hindu, and (4) the ignorant Hindu. In which class does Mansiya fall? Mansiya is an atheist from Kerala with Muslim parents and a Hindu husband. She was forced to give up her religion, Islam, when her mother was denied a burial in the Muslim cemetery because Mansiya was a Bharatanatyam dancer. Bharatanatyam is not Islamic, you see. Mansiya had to choose between Islam and Bharatanatyam and she chose the latter. Now a Hindu temple in Kerala has banned her from a 10-day National Festival of Dance and Music because she belongs to a class which does not exist in Mohan Bhagwat’s new system; she is an Ahindu, says the temple. For the Hindutva Pope, Mansiya is not an Ahindu simply because there are no more Ahindus in the country. But the Hindu temple in Kerala insists tha