Skip to main content

My Stories as Ebook


I have collected 33 short stories of mine into an ebook which will be published next week.  Most of these stories were written in the last two years and published in my blog.  Just to give a taste of what the stories are like, let me give the links to three stories selected at random:

Ahalya – the first story in the volume
And quiet flowed the Beas – the tenth story
The Nomad Learns Morality – the title story

The volume is dedicated to “Radha Soami Satsang Beas especially Dr Pranita Gopal.”  RSSB is a religious organisation which took over a school in Delhi where I was teaching for quite a while.  In about two years the organisation bulldozed the school to smithereens.  The bulldozer became my guru and muse.  However, the stories are in no way related to the school or RSSB.  Not at all to the bulldozer.  Not even to Dr Pranita Gopal.  All these happened to be my best inspirers.  I’m obliged to them eternally.  Were it not for them, the potential for fiction writing would have died quietly within me.  As Lord Rama’s touch brought life to Ahalya, RSSB brought a different life to the writer in me.  Dr Gopal is one of the many faces of RSSB that I came close to.  My admiration for her grows day by day.

I’m now working on a novel which is totally inspired by the RSSB.  The novel is tentatively titled Black Hole.  Following is an extract from it:

In the beginning was a black hole.  The black hole was with God, and the black hole was God.  All things existed in the black hole.  Nothing could escape the tenacity with which the black hole held everything within it.  The bonds of that tenacity grew strong and stronger until the black hole could not bear the bondage anymore.  And it exploded.  Boom.  Big Bang.  And the black hole became flesh.

Ishan Salman Panicker was writing his gospel.   

The picture in this post is not the actual cover of the book.  I designed it for fun.  I now live a few metres away from the road in the picture.  It is a picturesque village in Kerala whose landscapes suffuse beauty and vigour into my soul through an osmotic process which could not have taken place elsewhere.  I’m grateful to RSSB and its people for giving me this gift without even their knowledge.

That’s how life works.  We become agents of transmutation in other people’s lives.  We can be Desdemonas or Iagos.  Othello may fail to recognise the genuine face.  Othellos, Desdemonas and Iagos create art for us.  My stories are humble attempts to catch some of those aesthetic moments of life.  Some of those glimpses which may add some beauty to a life that is otherwise bulldozed over.


Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 24, 2015 at 8:52 AM

    Congratulations.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnuragOctober 24, 2015 at 9:21 AM

    Congratulations! I hope to get my hands on the print copy

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownOctober 24, 2015 at 11:06 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  4. rupam sarmaOctober 24, 2015 at 1:36 PM

    Congratulations :)
    Best Wishes

    ReplyDelete
  5. Online JournalistOctober 24, 2015 at 9:00 PM

    Hearty Congratulations and Best wishes sir...!

    ReplyDelete
  6. wingsOctober 24, 2015 at 9:38 PM

    Awaiting eagerly. Thanks. I want to relive the remnants of my past. Want to learn what I might not have learnt.

    ReplyDelete
  7. wingsOctober 24, 2015 at 9:39 PM

    Awaiting eagerly. Thanks. I want to relive the remnants of my past. Want to learn what I might not have learnt.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 25, 2015 at 6:08 AM

      Grateful for your zeal. The stories may not carry that sort of lessons but I do hope they will remind you of a lot of things.

      Delete
  8. Purba chakrabortyOctober 24, 2015 at 11:04 PM

    Wonderful. Congratulations. Wish you all the best :)

    ReplyDelete
  9. Devesh PrajapatiOctober 25, 2015 at 2:42 AM

    Congrts sir, good to see u again sir on blogspot.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 25, 2015 at 12:16 PM

      I had no choice, sir. Since I can't be a swami i have to be a writer. Thanks for welcoming me to where I rightfully belong.

      Delete
  10. Devesh PrajapatiOctober 25, 2015 at 12:13 PM

    Congrts sir, good to see u again sir on blogspot.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Roohi BhatnagarOctober 25, 2015 at 2:56 PM

    Wow.. The much awaited writer has arrived finally. I am happy and deeply inspired. Congratulations :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 25, 2015 at 6:44 PM

      Thank you, Roohi. You once asked me why I get caught in the cycle repeatedly (not in the same words). I have seen Rahu and Ketu playing their incessant shadow game. ..:)

      Delete
  12. UnknownOctober 26, 2015 at 6:31 AM

    Amazing! Best wishes!

    ReplyDelete
  13. Ashish KumarOctober 26, 2015 at 8:43 PM

    Congratulations sir... Wish you all the best for the success... I will read your short stories soon...

    ReplyDelete
  14. UnknownOctober 27, 2015 at 10:55 AM

    Life is for those, who dare most.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 27, 2015 at 12:04 PM

      You will meet in my stories great persons like Lord Rama and Alexander the great who faltered... I understand what you mean...

      Delete
  15. Ankita ChakravartiOctober 27, 2015 at 11:14 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 27, 2015 at 12:06 PM

      This is beyond me...

      Delete
    2. Ankita ChakravartiOctober 27, 2015 at 10:14 PM

      This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    3. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 28, 2015 at 5:13 AM

      Thanks for sharing. There were ways to save ourselves from that big fraud ... We defeated ourselves. We let ourselves be ruined by an entity that perceived itself as Browning's Duke of Ferrara who put an end to all smiles altogether in order to uphold the 900 year old family morality!

      Delete
  16. UnknownOctober 27, 2015 at 11:48 AM

    Sir can you send me a link to the book so I can buy.
    Looking forward to the series.
    Is there a way I can get in touch with you? Your old number I have does not seem functional.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalOctober 27, 2015 at 12:08 PM

      As soon as the book is released I'll let you know. Please don't call me. I'm under self-imposed imprisonment.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Ghost of a Banyan Tree

  Image from here Fiction Jaichander Varma could not sleep. It was past midnight and the world outside Jaichander Varma’s room was fairly quiet because he lived sufficiently far away from the city. Though that entailed a tedious journey to his work and back, Mr Varma was happy with his residence because it afforded him the luxury of peaceful and pure air. The city is good, no doubt. Especially after Mr Modi became the Prime Minister, the city was the best place with so much vikas. ‘Where’s vikas?’ Someone asked Mr Varma once. Mr Varma was offended. ‘You’re a bloody antinational mussalman who should be living in Pakistan ya kabristan,’ Mr Varma told him bluntly. Mr Varma was a proud Indian which means he was a Hindu Brahmin. He believed that all others – that is, non-Brahmins – should go to their respective countries of belonging. All Muslims should go to Pakistan and Christians to Rome (or is it Italy? Whatever. Get out of Bharat Mata, that’s all.) The lower caste Hindus co...
121 comments
Read more

Tanishq and the Patriots

Patriots are a queer lot. You don’t know what all things can make them pick up the gun. Only one thing is certain apparently: the gun for anything. When the neighbouring country behaves like a hoard of bandicoots digging into our national borders, we will naturally take up the gun. But nowadays we choose to redraw certain lines on the map and then proclaim that not an inch of land has been lost. On the other hand, when a jewellery company brings out an ad promoting harmony between the majority and the minority populations, our patriots take up the gun. And shoot down the ad. Those who promote communal harmony are traitors in India today. The sacred duty of the genuine Indian patriot is to hate certain communities, rape their women, plunder their land, deny them education and other fundamental rights and basic requirements. Tanishq withdrew the ad that sought to promote communal harmony. The patriot’s gun won. Aapka Bharat Mahan. In the novel Black Hole which I’m writing there is...
61 comments
Read more

Romance in Utopia

Book Review Title: My Haven Author: Ruchi Chandra Verma Pages: 161 T his little novel is a surfeit of sugar and honey. All the characters that matter are young employees of an IT firm in Bengaluru. One of them, Pihu, 23 years and all too sweet and soft, falls in love with her senior colleague, Aditya. The love is sweetly reciprocated too. The colleagues are all happy, furthermore. No jealousy, no rivalry, nothing that disturbs the utopian equilibrium that the author has created in the novel. What would love be like in a utopia? First of all, there would be no fear or insecurity. No fear of betrayal, jealousy, heartbreak… Emotional security is an essential part of any utopia. There would be complete trust between partners, without the need for games or power struggles. Every relationship would be built on deep understanding, where partners complement each other perfectly. Miscommunication and misunderstanding would be rare or non-existent, as people would have heightened emo...
9 comments
Read more

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
44 comments
Read more

The Circus called Politics

Illustration by ChatGPT I have/had many students whose parents are teachers in schools run or aided by the government. These teachers don’t send their own children to their own schools where education is free. They send their children to private schools like the one where I’ve been working. They pay huge fees to teach their children in schools where teachers are paid half of or less than their salaries. This is one of the many ironies about the Kerala society. An article in yesterday’s The Hindu [ A deeper meaning of declining school enrolment ] takes an insightful look at some of the glaring social issues in Kerala’s educational system. One such issue is the rapidly declining student enrolment in government and aided schools in the state. The private schools in the state, on the other hand, are getting more students. People don’t want to send their children to the schools run by the government systems. The chief reason is that the medium of instruction is Malayalam. The second ...
6 comments
Read more