“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”Sun Tzu On February 14, 2019, a 22-year old vehicle-borne suicide bomber rammed his explosive laden vehicle into a convoy transporting Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel at Lethpora in the Pulwama district of Jammu & Kashmir. The explosion killed 40 CRPF personnel. After […]
“Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away…” (The Bible, The Book of Revelation 21:1) It is true that Karl Marx (1818-1883) was very anti-religion. Marx was ethnically Jewish. His maternal grandfather was a Dutch Rabbi, while his paternal line had […]
“പുറമെ നിങ്ങൾ നീതിമാന്മാർ എന്നു മനുഷ്യർക്കു തോന്നുന്നു; അകമെയോ കപടഭക്തിയും അധർമ്മവും നിറഞ്ഞവരത്രേ.?” (മത്തായി 23:28) തൊണ്ണൂറ്റിനാലു വയസ്സുള്ള ഒരു ക്രിസ്തീയ വിശ്വാസിയുടെ മൃതദേഹം കഴിഞ്ഞ പത്തോ പതിനൊന്നോ ദിവസമായി സംസ്കരിക്കാന് കഴിയാതെ അദ്ദേഹത്തിന്റെ ഭവനത്തില് ഒരു മൊബൈല് മോര്ച്ചറിയില് സൂക്ഷിച്ചിരിക്കയായിരുന്നു. കായംകുളത്തിനടുത്തു കട്ടച്ചിറ എന്ന സ്ഥലത്തെ ഒരു ക്രസ്തീയ ദേവാലയത്തിലെ രണ്ടു ക്രിസ്തീയ വിഭാഗങ്ങള് (ഓര്ത്തഡോക്സ് – യാക്കോബായ) തമ്മിലുള്ള തര്ക്കമായിരുന്നു ആ ശവ സംസ്കാരം സമയത്തു നടക്കാതെ പോയതിനു കാരണം. ഒടുവില് ദേശീയ മനുഷ്യാവകാശക്കമ്മീഷന്റെ നിര്ദേശപ്രകാരം […]
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” ― Abraham Lincoln There is this joke about a Christian priest. In the course of worship services, collection plates (or offertory bags) […]
“Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and their glory is in their shame. Their minds are set on earthly things.” – (Bible, Philippians 3:19) Jesus had commanded, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal”, (Matthew 6:19). But the Catholic […]
“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.” ― Ernest Hemingway The title of this post comes from the book, ‘The Old Man and the Sea’, the last novel American author Ernest Hemingway published before he committed suicide in 1961. It received a lot of critical and commercial success. This […]
“Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” (Denis Diderot, French philosopher, art critic, and writer) When Apostle Paul started establishing the first churches, many people saw it as an opportunity to exploit it for personal aggrandizement. As the church evolved into a politically and […]
“I confess my iniquity, I am sorry for my sin” (Psalm 38:18) Confessing sins to the clergy is a practice in some Christian denominations. Disclosures made by the penitents to a priest are to remain a secret with the priest to be buried with him in the grave. Maybe, this was the case in the […]
The long poem, ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ by English romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), tells a rather creepy story. A ship was caught in a storm and was carried to South Pole. Everyone on the ship died of thirst and hunger leaving just one seaman, the Ancient Mariner, alive. This man was […]
“Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak Knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.” ― William Shakespeare, Macbeth The date was February 1, 2018 and time 10.30 in the night. Alone in my home, I sat watching Dr Sambit Patra and Dr Shashi Tharoor excitedly debating the Union budget […]