Tomichan Matheikal's blog

No conversion, only posing The New Year witnessed some attacks on Christian churches in Chhattisgarh’s Narayanpur district . Religious conversion is said to be the reason. I came to know from a personal source that the problem started as a family feud and burgeoned into communal violence. Many such attacks on religious places happened in the past in India and many more will take place in future too. Because religion in this country is not about spirituality but about power and manipulations. The most fundamental question that arises is whether we need religion at all . The answer is quite obvious. Very obvious to those who think clearly. If it is the spiritual meaning of life that you are seeking, religion may help but it is not the best means. Your personal enquiries and spiritual exercises will help you much better. Spirituality is a personal affair in the first place. Unless it touches your heart, it is not spirituality at all. Religion and its institutions may help you in the p

“Why don’t you do something useful?” I asked Priya. Priya is a class eleven student of mine. I had been asked to look after their class for a while as their mathematics teacher was called to the office on an urgent task. Priya looked at me and smiled indolently. Her maths notebook lay open before her even more lethargically. Sin Ө and Cos Ө floated on the page like butterflies looking for roses. All her classmates were busy doing one thing or another. “Why don’t you solve a problem or two of trigonometry?” I asked. Priya was not amused. She didn’t seem particularly fond of Sin Ө and Cos Ө. “Why don’t you write a story?” I knew she liked stories. “ Write a story?” She blinked at me. Writing is not something that her generation likes to do. I learnt that as their English teacher. They will listen to stories. Some of them, at least. But write? Oh no, that’s so boring, dude. “Hmm,” I said in her generation’s lingo. “What about?” She demanded. “Priya was in love with Sin

Title: Marilyn: The Passion and the Paradox Author: Lois Banner Publisher: Bloomsbury, 2012 Pages: 515 The worst tragedy is when you become your own enemy. Marily Monroe was her own enemy and so she ended killing herself at the age of 36. She had become an icon of Hollywood. She had many lovers, all of whom were highly eminent personalities. Yet she chose to flee from life altogether. This book tells her story in all its glory and tragedy. Lois Banner is a historian by profession and hence the book reads more like history than literature. However, it is written in a simple style that any reader will find easy to read. There is absolutely no jargon or academic verbosity. Banner divides Marilyn’s story into five parts: (1) Childhood, (2) Hollywood, (3) Meaning of Marilyn, (4) Departure from Hollywood and life in New York, and (5) Return to Hollywood. As the subtitle of the book indicates, Marilyn was a passion and a paradox. In Marilyn’s own words, “A lot of people like to th

I wouldn’t have aspired to become a writer had I learnt the essential lesson from Franz Kafka at the right time. Kafka [from Wikipedia] Kafka didn’t want his works to be published because he wrote for his personal satisfaction, out of some sort of compulsion, and he didn’t think his writings were good enough for others to read. But the world is lucky that he didn’t dump them. He entrusted them with Max Brod, his friend and writer, with the request to burn them after his death. The world is again lucky that Brod didn’t honour that wish. Otherwise, we would have been deprived of some of the finest novels like The Trial and The Castle . Brod went out of his way to get some other works of Kafka published after the Nazis captured Prague in 1939 because of which he had to flee. But he did carry with him Kafka’s unpublished works to Palestine and got them published. If Kafka didn’t think of himself as worthy of publication, what should I have thought of my own writings? I am not even as g

  Life is like a game of chess except that there are more colours than just black and white. Whatever the colour, however, the only ultimate purpose is to safeguard the King whose moves are severely limited by the very nature of the game. The Queen is the most dynamic killer. In Indian chess it's not called Queen, it's Mantri or Prime Minister. India respects women too much to allow her more mobility than men. Then there are the devious Knights and missile-like Rooks. Bishops who work aslant. The pawns are designed to be sacrificed. They are the fist victims. Inevitably. By design. Even if the game had more colours, the pawns would be the first to go. They are the silly, mediocre, plain citizens, good for nothing more than pay taxes and die for the King. Die for the King. Not even live for the King. The entire game is designed to keep the apparently impotent King triumphant. Like King Putin sitting smugly like a cretin in Kremlin while his Rooks decimate pawns in Ukraine? Is t

Chakkippara as seen from in front of my school A better perspective of the landscape Chakkippara is a cliff that is just a couple of kilometres from the school where I teach. Whenever I am on invigilation duty in the auditorium [3 rd floor] of my school I enjoy the sight of that huge rock which juts out of the landscape rather coquettishly. Many of my students have visited the place which has become a sort of tourist place though it is not easily accessible. The approach road is quite narrow and it stops a good kilometre away from the cliff. You have to walk up the steep concrete path for a while and then do some trekking over the rugged mountain path made by visitors. When Tony, a former student of mine, suggested a visit yesterday evening I thought that would be a memorable way to end the year 2022. He picked me up from home by his car. Our original plan was to reach Chakkippara in time to see the sunset. But some family matter kept Tony busy and the sun was already setting when

  You and I may be saints in a country that garlands rapists and killers . One of the delightful short stories of Gabriel Garcia Marquez is ‘The Saint’. A man named Margarito Duarte, who has not studied beyond the primary school, becomes a saint in the view of the narrator by doing nothing but carrying the dead body of his seven-year-old daughter for 22 years hoping to get her canonised by the Catholic Church. Margarito, like many others of his village, is forced to disinter the body of his daughter because a dam that is going to be constructed requires the acquisition of the parish cemetery. Everyone in the parish disinters the bones of their dear departed so that they can be buried elsewhere. When Margarito opens the tomb of his daughter who had died at the age of 7 due to illness, he is startled. His daughter looked as alive as she was before her burial eleven years ago. He, as well as the others in the parish, is convinced that his daughter is a saint and that is why her body h