Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Development has been one of the many mantras that drives the Modi governance. Like quite a few of Modi’s mantras, development has wreaked its share of decimation in many parts of the country. The latest is a Rs72,000 crore project in the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. The latest issue of Frontline magazine features on its cover the fatal development that is being exported to the islands from Indraprastha. All the information in this post has been taken from Frontline . I have just converted the long articles in the magazine into capsules for a quick read. For details, please go to the magazine. Before we look at what is being planned for Andaman & Nicobar, let us remind ourselves of what has happened to Joshimath, the threshold to the Abode of Gods. Development killed that small hill town. Development has extracted similar disastrous prices from many other places such as the coastal areas, Vizhinjam being the latest. People like Arundhati Roy have written copiously about the

From Adobe All kings and others who wield similar powers (e.g., the Prime Minister in a democracy) are counterfeit people. They hide their real selves behind many masks and facades and present to the public what they think is the ideal image of themselves. A A Milne’s short play, Portrait of a Gentleman in Slippers , entertains us with the motley masks worn by Henry XXIV, a 30-year-old bachelor king who is going to marry Princess Averil soon. Introducing him, Milne says that “ He is all the Kings that there have been in fairy tales and history .” He is a paragon of all royal virtues, apparently. How many of those virtues are real, however? This is what the play explores. The King is seen in the beginning of the play with his body-servant Brand. Brand knows, like anyone who has even the remotest association with royalty, how to keep the King pleased with subtle and not-so-subtle flattery. “It is a pleasure to deal with a beard like your Majesty’s” is one of his opening dialogues. He

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