Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Book Review  Title: Manual of the Warrior of Light Author: Paulo Coelho Publisher: HarperCollins, 2002 Pages: 268 [Content only one side, however]   You can work miracles if you wish. Miracle is a change of attitude. Miracle is a matter of changing your way of looking at reality. Paulo Coelho’s book, Manual of the Warrior of Light , is a kind of handbook for those who wish to perform miracles. But if you are looking for some shortcuts to miracles, or even some practical psychological tips for self-improvement, this book will disappoint you. How do you transform your attitudes? How to change your perspectives? Sit down and do some serious meditation. Probe within. Probe deep. Question yourself, your thoughts and feelings, your beliefs and convictions. This book can help you do that by giving some starting points. Each page of the book carries a particular thought meant to stimulate your contemplation. Many of these thoughts may not be new to anyone who has read a lot

Bob, before his adventure Bob’s body is punctuated with wounds and scars. Most of them are inflicted by Modiji. A couple of them are knife wounds which only humans could have inflicted. Bob is my beloved cat. Modiji is possibly Bob’s father because he is the only male cat that comes from somewhere and imposes his Mann ki Baat on my females, Dessie and Brownie. Bob resembles Modiji physically. Beyond the physical similarities, however, they have nothing in common. Modiji was harmless until Bob grew up to adulthood and started courting Dessie and Brownie. Now Modiji and Bob are rivals. And Bob is the invariable loser in their countless encounters. I named the marauder Modiji only because of his unexpected onslaughts on my beloved Bob. Modiji emerges from nowhere at totally unexpected hours – even in the middle of the night – and pounces on Bob. The assaults remind me of: ·       the farm laws which led to a yearlong agitation ·       demonetization which was nothing more than

  Pablo Neruda ascended the podium and said: Brothers and Sisters of the world, lend me your ears for a moment. We can still save the earth if we wish to. All that we need to do is slow down a bit. All this rush, all this single-minded pursuit of so-called development, is not going to take us any further because the earth is dying. We are killing the planet. With all the wars we fight day in and day out. Green wars, wars with gas, wars with fire. Our skies are dying unable to breathe. We have sent too much gas and smoke up there. Our rivers are dying. And so are our seas. Death is our primary contribution. To the planet. And to fellow human beings as well. To all the creatures on the planet. We are a belligerent lot. We love to fight. If there is nothing to fight for, we will create new idols and fight for their sake. We arm our gods with deadly weapons. There is poison in our hearts. And our hearts overflow profusely into our rivers and forests and oceans and the skies.

Ashoka's lions More and more opposition parties are choosing to boycott the inauguration of the new Parliament building by PM Modi. The four lions of the national emblem that Modi unveiled atop the building on 11 July 2022 will snarl even more furiously now, I believe. The 9.5-ton representation of Ashoka’s lions is a stark contrast to the graceful gentleness of the Sarnath lions which were inspired by the Buddha. What Modi’s lions represent is a paradigm shift. India is making a decided transition from the Buddha to the Modi. From compassion to aggression. From mutual coexistence to subjugation of the other. Modi’s lions mark the subversion of the Buddha as much as Buddha himself was a subversion of the ruthless Brahminical system of his time. Buddha could not accept the heartlessness of the Brahminical system with its untouchability and all the brutality that went with it. Modi is now taking India back to that brutality, so to say. In the ancient India, the sages left hum

Three years ago, Kerala was declared the fastest ageing state in India. In the past 60 years, the percentage of people aged 60 and above in Kerala has shot up from 5.1% to 16.5% - the highest in Indian states. I am also one of those booming sexagenarians of Kerala. On top of that, Kerala’s youth are leaving the state for foreign countries. They study whatever course is available to them in those foreign countries, take up some job and settle down there. Their parents will live in Kerala. And grow old. So old age homes and retirement homes and others of the type are in great demand in the state. There are some remarkably good retirement homes available in the state already. I’m sure more such will come up sooner rather than later. Let me present just a few here. I took an interest in them because Maggie and I are likely to end up in one of those in not too distant a future. Bless Homes in Kochi Let me start with one from the city nearest my village, Kochi. “Some call it Retire

I have struggled with my ego for a very long period. In fact, right from childhood. I had an irresistible need to be always right. Every argument had to end with my word as the last. When people corrected my mistakes, I felt offended. I could never accept defeats with even the slightest of grace. These are all signs of an inflated ego. Somewhere in the middle of my life my ego was hammered into pulp by certain committed benefactors in Shillong. They did a good job because for years after that my ego didn’t raise its head. When your ego is under control, you are more aware of yourself. You know that you are wrong sometimes and you can admit your weaknesses and frailties without making a fuss about them. You make amends when you err and you wish to avoid errors as far as possible. You have the courage to apologise when errors still happen as they do invariably. When others hurt you, you learn not to take the hurts to the heart. You try to understand why others did it to you. You are

Title: Age of Vice  Author: Deepti Kapoor Publisher: Juggernaut, 2003 Pages: 548 If you want to meet some of the vilest characters in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, Deepti Kapoor’s Age of Vice is just the novel for you. The novel opens on Delhi’s Inner Ring Road in the year 2004. Five pavement-dwellers have been run over by a Mercedes car at 3 o’clock in a cold February night. The man found in the driver’s seat, Ajay, is not the real killer. He is a convenient proxy for carrying a rich man’s sins. Ajay is originally from Eastern Uttar Pradesh, the crime-hub of India. Back in 1991, when Ajay was only an eight-year-old boy, his father was killed by the goons of the upper-class landlords who rule the roost in the villages. Ajay was sold by his mother as a slave. The boy reaches Himachal Pradesh. A few years later, he finds himself in Goa from where Sunny Wadia takes him to Delhi as his right-hand man. Delhi – the city of “con men, criminals … ugly and dirty … no good, (where) only ri