Tomichan Matheikal's blog

From the Onam celebrations at my school today   Kerala has started Onam celebrations, the most colourful and joyful festival of the state. The schools in the state will be closed for a whole week from tomorrow. Even the government offices will not function for most part of the week. Onam is not just a festival, it is the heartbeat of the people of Kerala.  The legend that sustains Onam is quite paradoxical. Mahabali, or Maveli as he is affectionately called in Kerala, was an Asura king. He was the paragon of goodness though he belonged to species called demons, Asuras. During his reign there was no corruption whatever. People possessed and practised all good qualities. In short, Kerala was a utopia under Maveli's tutelage.  The gods became jealous. That's the paradox. Gods who should be happy to see humans living happily in peace and harmony became jealous! None but Vishnu himself decided to decimate the utopia on earth. He took the form of a dwarf named Vamana and deceived Mav

Image from Telegraph Book Review Title: Smoke and Ashes Author: Amitav Ghosh Publisher: HarperCollins, 2023 History can be viewed from diverse perspectives. Academic historians usually look at it from political perspectives. As a result, we get very blinkered views of the past. Rulers do not constitute history. In fact, too many of them have been blatant exploiters of the common people to whom history should rightfully belong. The rulers, more often than not, snatch history ruthlessly from its real inheritors. Literary novelists give us better history than academic historians. Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy comes to mind immediately. Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy is another commendable example. History comes alive in the hands of such writers as Mantel and Ghosh. What if they actually write history instead of novels? And that is exactly what Ghosh has done in Smoke and Ashes . Smoke and Ashes views history from a totally unexpected angle: opium. “Only by recognizing th

From Pinterest I picked up a 20-year-old young man the other day from a nearby town at his mother’s request. It was a cool evening and, as is my habit in pleasant weathers, I had lowered the windows of the car and switched off the air-conditioner. The boy got in on the front seat beside me and made himself comfortable by repositioning the seat and its back. Then he pushed the switch of the AC and turned its knob to the maximum. I decided to wait for him to switch it off himself after realizing that I wasn’t going to shut the windows. But he didn’t. So I switched off the AC and let the evening’s soothing air waft in from the lush green vegetation on both sides of the village road. The birds had already settled in their roosts and the crickets hadn’t started their eerie chirp. I love the evenings in Kerala’s countryside including the eeriness lent by the crickets. The young man beside me was an utter bore, however. He pulled out his headphone from somewhere, fixed it to his ears, sta

From Shutterstock “Instead of preaching forty year / I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer,” says Parson Thirdly in Thomas Hardy’s poem Channel Firing . The parson is dead and is lying in his tomb when he is awakened by the sound of cannons. He and many other dead people sit up in their tombs thinking that the Judgement Day has arrived. But God tells them to go back to sleep. “It’s gunnery practice out at sea,” God says, “Just as before you went below; / The world is as it used to be.” God goes on to say that He may abandon the idea of the final Judgement altogether “for you are men / And rest eternal sorely need.” Parson Thirdly’s skeleton nods his head in agreement. Then he turns to his neighbour-skeleton and says that all his preaching and teaching of morality and spirituality was in vain since the world never improved a bit with all that. It was better to enjoy life when he had the time. The parson feels that he wasted a whole lifetime doing something that was of no use to any

Image from Freepik ‘Net’ and ‘Web’ are two words associated with the digital world. They are apt too because they carry a hint of the traps linked with that world. Children are often the victims of the digital snares which have protean forms. We need to be aware of these dangers so that we can save our children from them. Cyberbullying Bullying is a common problem almost everywhere in the children’s world. Cyberbullying is usually found in the form of harsh, insulting or teasing messages posted on various digital platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp. Any child can become a target of this assault on his/her dignity because of anything from physical appearance and economic background to psychological make-up and religious inclinations. The impact of cyberbullying can be phenomenal. It can lead a child to withdrawal, depression, aggression, and many other behavioural problems. There are far too many cyber predators in the virtual world just as there are criminals in the real wo

The Himalayas - from Lonely Planet The other day, I was at a friend’s place when the cry of two women rose in the air. It was from a house a few doors down. When I reached there along with my friend, quite a few people had already gathered. The two women – a mother and daughter – who wailed explained the cause of their grief. They believed that one particular woman, whom they mentioned by name, was doing black magic against them because of which they were facing disasters one after another. The latest disaster was the daughter’s failure in her graduation examination. One of the men who had come hearing the wailing told the mother and daughter rather bluntly that what they needed was psychiatric help. “You believe in such balderdash as black magic [ koodotram , in Malayalam]?” He turned to the daughter and said, “You flunked because you didn’t study. Instead, you were loitering with your boyfriend.” He went away in disgust. My friend told me, as we walked back, that the mother was

One of the many messages that Richard Bach’s Illusions proffers is that once we have climbed certain peaks we won’t descend. Once we have reached certain heights, we will spread our wings and fly. Once we have reached certain standards, nothing less will satisfy us. When the knight in John Keats’s poem, La Belle Dame Sans Merci , encountered the ideal beauty, he refused to be satisfied with anything less and spent his entire life pursuing that beauty in spite of its fatal elusiveness. If you meet your god, how will that encounter alter your life? Those who touch the divine can never be satisfied with the mundane routines of existence. Stating that same truth in another way: If you are just another ordinary person on the earth, you have not touched the divine. You have not met your god. Your god is only an idol in the temple or the church or some such place. There are umpteen religions in the human world. There are countless gods. But evil keeps mounting. And pretty much of