Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Yevgeny Prigozhin rebelled against Putin in June this year and he died in a plane crash in August. Under normal circumstances, his death wouldn’t have taken two months after his rebellion. Putin’s Russia is not going through normal circumstances, you know. Putin is a Communist. But his hero is Peter the Great, Russia’s first Emperor. Peter’s statuette adorns Putin’s private spaces. What Peter did to his own son is quite like what Putin did to his closest friend Prigozhin. Peter’s son rebelled against him and then defected and escaped to Vienna. That was in 1716, just to remind you. Peter lured him back to Russia promising security. When the young man reached the ‘security’ promised by his father, he was tortured to death. Putin had given all assurance to Prigozhin that his rebellion would be forgiven. Call it political strategy or diplomacy or sheer trickery, whatever you like. Karma too, if you prefer. Putin is the ultimate product of Communism. Dictatorship is the natural out

Queen Sethu Lakshmi Bayi with her daughter A former student of mine asked me whether I would write a post on an issue that particularly vexed her. There is a bus stop in her hometown which cost no less than Rs40 lakh to the state exchequer. Worse, the construction is of no use whatever to the commuters. Whether it is raining or shining, the commuters will have to use their umbrella for protection. Then my student came across another bus stop at a nearby town which was constructed at the cost of Rs122,700 and that is an appropriate construction. This second one was built with funds collected from the people of the place. The first was built with money from the MPLADS.     There are infinite such instances of corruption in this country so much so I wouldn’t think of writing a post on them. Like most other citizens of this country, I too have accepted corruption as an integral part of politics here. Under the present regime, corruption has assumed a different dimension altogether. The

From India Today Name-changing is one of the hobbies of India’s present Prime Minister. I wrote about it a few days back too though rather facetiously: see India, Bharat, Hindustan . The latest issue of India Today has devoted page after page to the PM’s present rechristening. I wish to bring here a few interesting observations from some of those eminent writers in the weekly. 1. Shashi Tharoor Tharoor argues that “In English, and therefore internationally, our country was referred to as ‘India’; in Hindi and other Indian languages, ‘Bharat’ was our country’s name.” For example: We, the people of India / Bharat ke log . Or The President of India / Bharat ke Rashtrapati . Tharoor gives us an interesting parallel from Germany. “’Germany’ is Deutschland at home and to all who speak Deutsch (the language we refer to as ‘German’).” Tharoor dismantles the argument that India is a name given by the British colonialists. The “name India has nothing to do with British colonialism: it p

Pearl S Buck’s short story, The Enemy , set in Japan during the World War II, is a poignant lesson in the conflict between the heart and the brain. Dr Sadao unexpectedly comes across an American prisoner of war who was trying to escape from the convict ship. He was shot in the back and was wounded further by the sea waves that threw him against the rocks in the ocean. Dr Sadao’s dilemma is whether to save the young American’s life or to hand him over to the authorities. Sadao is one of the best surgeons in the country and he can save the man. But as a good citizen, it is his duty to report an escaped soldier. Soon the doctor’s heart overpowers his reason. He carries the enemy home and goes ahead with the surgery and treatment. Throughout the story which unfolds over a few weeks, the doctor tells himself time and again that the soldier in his house is his enemy, his country’s enemy. But the doctor is incapable of reporting him to the authorities. The report that he begins to type does

One of the infinite trolls on the various media in India says, “When a clown enters the palace, he does not become a king; the country becomes a circus.” Has India become one such enormous circus? Today’s Malayala Manorama [15 Sep] newspaper says that the 400 nurses recruited by one single agency in Kochi at one time alone are struggling to eke out their living by mowing lawns and doing other jobs such as painting walls. They spent over Rs12 lakh to get to their El Dorado in the hope that all their financial problems including those of their families would be over soon when they start earning handsome pay-packets as nurses in good hospitals. Millions of young jobseekers are leaving India every year. “India saw a 30% decrease in jobs for young people since 2016,” say news headlines . It is not only jobseekers that leave the country but also young students who complete class 12. From the school where I am teaching, half of the students go abroad for higher studies after class 12 b

An artist's impression of earth vs k2-18b - from here Is there a planet out there somewhere with life on it? Our scientists have done pretty much research already and more is going on. As far as I know, the nearest planet that has the potential to sustain life is an exoplanet that our scientists have named K2-18b. It is a Hycean planet, which means there is possibly hydrogen and water-ocean on it. [Hycean is portmanteau of hydrogen and ocean.] Exoplanet means that it doesn’t belong to our Solar System though it is in the habitable zone, though it is 120 light-years away from our earth. K2-18 is the sun of K2-18b. [I guess that’s quite a convenient way of naming things in science. Naming them Petre and Paul, for example, would have been as inconvenient as it is irrational.] K2-18 is dwarf star; that is, a relatively small star of low luminosity. “A cool star!” our new gen would say. However, the planet's size can be quite intimidating: 8.6 times as big as the earth. NASA

Swami Agnivesh Religious people can be quite scary, especially nowadays. Swami Agnivesh was a religious person in the genuine sense of the term. He loved people. He stood for what was right. He gathered enemies because he was a good man. Today [Sep 11] is his third death anniversary. I met Swami Agnivesh personally only once. It was some 20 years ago when he visited the school where I was teaching in Delhi as the chief guest on the occasion of Independence Day or Republic Day. I had no idea what kind of a person he was until then. His speech on the occasion struck a chord with me. When words come from the heart, they are powerfully eloquent. Swami Agnivesh’s speech had the power to stir the depths within. Here was a man for whom religion was a matter of action rather than prayers and rituals. Swami Agnivesh was a champion of social justice and communal harmony. Ramachandra Guha described him as a man of “steely courage and enormous compassion.” That was the most apt description o