Tomichan Matheikal's blog

‘Assessment Report on the Sustainable Use of Wild Species’ is the result of a long research by about 300 social and natural scientists from across the world. The study points out that billions of people worldwide rely on about 50,000 wild species for food, energy, medicine and income. 33,000 species are plants and fungi; 7,500 are fish and aquatic creatures; and 9,000 are amphibians, insects, reptiles, birds and mammals. About 10,000 species are used directly for human food. All these facts underscore the importance of wild life and the necessity for its sustainable use. The tribal people of India have always had their own traditional ways for preserving the forests and wild life. They have always been aware of the simple truth that forests are not fragile entities to be conserved through patronage from above. Forests are life itself. Caring for them is not a strategical and legal affair. You can’t preserve the forests merely by making certain laws as we can understand easily by l

The irony in the Prime Minister’s exhortation to Indians to display the national flag in various places may not be lost on those who know the history of India’s freedom struggle. Modi is fundamentally an RSS man and the RSS was bitterly opposed to the national flag and they refused to hoist that flag on 15 Aug 1947. They hoisted the RSS flag instead. The classical book, Freedom at Midnight , describes that flag-hoisting thus:   The ceremony being held on a vacant lot in the inland city of Poona… was similar to thousands like it taking place all across the new dominion of India. It was a flag-raising. One thing, however, set the little ritual apart from most of the others. The flag slowly moving up a makeshift staff in the centre of a group of 500 men was not the flag of an independent India. It was an orange triangle, and emblazoned upon it was the symbol which, in a slightly modified form, had terrorized Europe for a decade, the swastika. Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins,

I live in a state whose people’s most cherished legend is about a utopia. That legend revolves round Mahabali (whom the people of Kerala call Maveli affectionately). Maveli was an Asura (demon) king. But his reign was the most unparalleled in Kerala, according to the legend. No ruler could ever reach anywhere near the good governance implemented by Maveli. Maveli’s reign was marked by honesty, equality, justice and other fundamental human values and virtues. There was no discrimination in the name of castes and creeds. No sectarianism. No jingoism. No hate-filled slogans. No gods, too. Probably, this last thing - absence of gods – made it a utopia. I was brought up in an orthodox Catholic family. As a child I learnt about God and his absurd ways. The Bible opened with the idea of a weird god who created a Paradise (Utopia) for humans only to deceive them sooner than later. God placed an irresistible temptation right in the middle of the Paradise. He knew the human heart wasn’t im

Image courtesy ‘Best of post-truth’ is an oxymoron. Post-truth isn’t good in the first place. So how do you get ‘best’? Post-truth refers to a system (socio-political, usually) in which objective facts are not given as much weightage in shaping public opinion as appeals to emotion and prejudices. Emotions, prejudices, personal beliefs and aspirations determine the evolution of public opinion. Too many countries, including my own India, are traversing the path of post-truth now. Lies are shouted loud, propagated through various media channels, and accepted gladly as truths by a sizable majority of people. Imagine millions of people believing that climate change is not real because their Prime Minister said, Sardi zada hai, unki sehne ki kshamta kam ho gayi hai . Nehru’s ghost is still haunting India’s economy, according to these same people. The Mughals who died centuries ago dominate the nation’s collective psyche. Cows in India fart oxygen. Cow urine can cure cancer. Thus goes the

  Many teachers often ask me for help with the topic of 'Invitation' in CBSE's writing skills section. I condense CBSE's questions in this section thus:  What that means is: 1. There are 2 types of invitation: formal & informal. 2. Formal invitations can be in the form of cards or letters.  3. Cards are used when you have to invite large numbers of people (anniversaries, marriages, etc.) 4. Letters are used when you invite a few individuals.  Example: judges for a competition, chief guest for a function. 5. Informal invitations are used when your function is informal. Example: birthday celebrations, party for celebrating admission to a prestigious institution. 6. Strictly formal replies are used only by people who have ( or should have)  enormous egos. Example: bureaucrats, ambassadors. 7. Formal replies are just ordinary formal letters and informal replies are plain informal letters.  Let me give examples for the above types so that they become clearer.  1. Formal

Given a choice, will I go to Moon or Mars? Moon, of course. Haven’t I always been there? Been a loony, I mean. There was always something wrong with me right from childhood. At the age of 25 I landed on the client’s chair in a psychiatrist’s office. Nothing much came of it. Remember Holden Caulfield of The Catcher in the Rye ? After a whole year’s psychoanalysis, he remained the same: as loony as he ever was. Some of my benefactors in Shillong put me through a five-year psychoanalysis with almost everyone in the place experimenting on my madness as if I were a drum placed in the marketplace for anyone to beat a rhythm while passing by. Nothing happened again. I remained as loony as ever, if not worse. Now as an old man, a senior citizen by my government’s reckoning [which simply means I pay more for insurances], I feel loonier than ever. If earlier I felt out of place in my nearby surroundings, now I feel like a total misfit in my entire country. I can’t understand what my fellow c

Robben Island Prison Image from Britannica Encyclopedia  It was a pitch-black midnight. The Robben Island Prison stood like a gigantic monster on a grim terrain. The guard who was on watch that night was startled by an unusual sound from one of the dark cells in the solitary confinement section of the prison. What could be that grunt-like sound at this time of the night when all prisoners must be asleep? Even light was not permitted anywhere in the prison. Forget sounds. Was it some ghost? After all, so many prisoners died in those cells succumbing to the brutality of the British police. The guard moved in the direction of the sound. It was coming from the cell where a prisoner named Nelson Mandela was kept. The guard stood outside the dark cell and listened. “To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer…” “Mandela, what the hell are you doing?” The guard asked. He knew if the chief heard such sounds that would be the end of the prisoner.