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 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
47 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
18 comments
Read more

The Vegetarian

Book Review Title: The Vegetarian Author: Han Kang Translator: Deborah Smith [from Korean] Publisher: Granta, London, 2018 Pages: 183 Insanity can provide infinite opportunities to a novelist. The protagonist of Nobel laureate Han Kang’s Booker-winner novel, The Vegetarian , thinks of herself as a tree. One can argue with ample logic and conviction that trees are far better than humans. “Trees are like brothers and sisters,” Yeong-hye, the protagonist, says. She identifies herself with the trees and turns vegetarian one day. Worse, she gives up all food eventually. Of course, she ends up in a mental hospital. The Vegetarian tells Yeong-hye’s tragic story on the surface. Below that surface, it raises too many questions that leave us pondering deeply. What does it mean to be human? Must humanity always entail violence? Is madness a form of truth, a more profound truth than sanity’s wisdom? In the disturbing world of this novel, trees represent peace, stillness, and nonviol...
6 comments
Read more

The RSS does not exist

An organisation that has 80,000 branches in India does not exist legally in any document. This is the cover story of The Caravan this month. By the way, The Caravan is one of the very few publications that still continues to exist in spite of being overtly critical of Narendra Modi and his Sangh Parivar. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is not registered as an organisation under any of the usual Indian registration laws such as the Societies Registration Act or as a trust or company. It functions as an unregistered voluntary organisation, though it is arguably the largest public organisation in the country. This situation makes the organisation absolutely unaccountable to anyone, argues The Caravan . The RSS is not legally required to file annual returns to the Tax department or disclose its financial details publicly though it deals with thousands of crores of rupees every year especially after Modi became the Prime Minister of the country. The membership of the organisat...
12 comments
Read more

No Problems Only Opportunities

You’ve probably heard this joke. A young man walked into his office one morning and found a beautiful young lady sitting in his chair. He called the MD and said, “Sir, I have a problem.” The MD replied, “Don’t you know our company’s motto, young man? No Problems, Only Opportunities .” When Suchita of The Blogchatter sent me a mail with the topic of this week’s blog hop –  - the first thing that came to my mind was the above joke. I know many people – too many, in fact – who went through terrible problems. My own life was a series of problems in none of which was there the consolation of any beautiful woman. One essential lesson I learnt from life is that life is a series of problems. You solve one and then arises the next one. Now I have reached an age when problems are no more problems: they are life itself. If you ask me what was the biggest problem I ever dealt with, it was my last years in Shillong. I was a lecturer in a college drawing a fat salary stipulated by the U...
13 comments
Read more