Skip to main content

Three books and something



Reading is one of the ideal hobbies. You can be all by yourself and live in a world different from the actual one around you which is likely to be quite unpleasant. I spend my free time usually with books. The one that is waiting right now to be read is Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Published in 2007, it is the autobiography of a Somali-born Dutch-American activist and feminist. It tells the real story of a fighter who “survived civil war, female circumcision, brutal beatings, an adolescence as a devout believer, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, and life in four countries under dictatorships” (from the blurb).


I love people who struggle and fight against the mediocre world that relentlessly seeks to destroy the intelligent, liberal thinkers. Ayaan Hirsi Ali belongs to that group. In the introduction to the book, Christopher Hitchens tells us that the oft-heard advice that “we should not judge a religion by the actions of its fringe extremists” is absurd when we consider the lives of real individuals who have been persecuted and/or threatened with death in the name of religion. What is the crime of such people? That they wish to live their life with intellectual honesty.

People like Ayaan Hirsi Ali inspire me.

Another book that has found place in my to-read list is The Illicit Happiness of Other People by Manu Joseph. It is the story of a suicide. South India has a suicide rate that is about six times the world average. This novel is set in South India and I am interested to find out how the author deals with the theme of suicide. The fact that it is a darkly comical novel is an added trigger.


The third book that is waiting to be read is All the Lives We Never Lived by Anuradha Roy. It is a critically acclaimed novel that amalgamates fiction with real famous lives. Rabindranath Tagore and Begum Akhtar all make their presence felt in the novel. I’m fond of such novels that blend fiction with reality or history. Moreover, I understand that Roy has a subdued style; she is a writer of great subtlety.


I’m writing this for Indispire Edition 268.


So there’s one more thing left. Do I consider reading habits that go beyond textbooks as the real education? Undoubtedly yes. I am a teacher who seldom sticks to the textbooks. I may take an entire hour to finish one paragraph in the textbook because something in the paragraph will take me to one writer and then another and so on. I go far beyond the textbook and students love it. Of course, occasionally this habit of mine has invited complaints from parents that I shake up the religious faith of the young students. My motive has never been to rattle anyone’s faith in any god but to make such faith more meaningful. Religion without soul is the most dangerous thing in today’s world. I try to bring that soul to the young believers in front of me. I try to make them question a whole lot of things which are absurd to any intelligent, thinking person. Books help me in that process. Books will help anyone in the process of making more sense out of life.

#ReadBooks

Comments

  1. Arvind PasseyApril 5, 2019 at 3:53 PM

    Phew! That is one list that is going to me ages to read... but then I am a slow reader. Yes, I do agree that going beyond text-books is one thing students must be encouraged to understand because we as a nation are stuck to rote learning.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 5, 2019 at 4:02 PM

      I've just started with the 1st. It's harder to find time during vacation. 😏

      Delete
    2. wingsApril 5, 2019 at 11:38 PM

      You will make it bibliophile!

      Delete
    3. Tomichan MatheikalApril 6, 2019 at 6:41 AM

      I'm yet to order the last two. 😏

      Delete
  2. Gowthama RajaveluApril 8, 2019 at 8:10 AM

    Interesting set of books. Heard about the third one, though. Sounds intriguing. Reading is always fun as well as fascinating. It gives you a kind of pleasure that is unimaginable.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 8, 2019 at 8:42 AM

      I'm already half way through the first. A gripping book. Yes, reading is a tremendous pleasure.

      Delete
  3. SumandebrayApril 8, 2019 at 11:09 AM

    A curated selection of books. That is quite a methodical approach to reading. I am of the random type... pick up a book and continue if I happen to like it. I try to stay away from books that deals with struggle and suffering. Rather than deriving strength from such tales, I inherit sadness that lingers in my system for a long time.
    Happy reading

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 8, 2019 at 11:44 AM

      I am also a man who carries much pain within. That's why, perhaps, I love sad books. The dark comedy is my favourite, however. Sadness has a comic side to it, have you noticed? Just like the pleasure we get by scratching a wound open.

      Delete
  4. Lakshmi ShajiApril 9, 2019 at 11:10 AM

    Definitely we students also love to go beyond textbooks rather than cramming them.It gives immense pleasure...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalApril 9, 2019 at 12:33 PM

      Yes, I've noticed how students become more interested when the discussion moves away from textbook.

      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
44 comments
Read more

Florentino’s Many Loves

Florentino Ariza has had 622 serious relationships (combo pack with sex) apart from numerous fleeting liaisons before he is able to embrace the only woman whom he loved with all his heart and soul. And that embrace happens “after a long and troubled love affair” that lasted 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days. Florentino is in his late 70s when he is able to behold, and hold as well, the very body of his beloved Fermina, who is just a few years younger than him. She now stands before him with her wrinkled shoulders, sagged breasts, and flabby skin that is as pale and cold as a frog’s. It is the culmination of a long, very long, wait as far as Florentino is concerned, the end of his passionate quest for his holy grail. “I’ve remained a virgin for you,” he says. All those 622 and more women whose details filled the 25 diaries that he kept writing with meticulous devotion have now vanished into thin air. They mean nothing now that he has reached where he longed to reach all his life. The
62 comments
Read more

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so
39 comments
Read more

Yesterday

With students of Carmel Margaret, are you grieving / Over Goldengrove unleaving…? It was one of my first days in the eleventh class of Carmel Public School in Kerala, the last school of my teaching career. One girl, whose name was not Margaret, was in the class looking extremely melancholy. I had noticed her for a few days. I didn’t know how to put the matter over to her. I had already told the students that a smiling face was a rule in the English class. Since Margaret didn’t comply, I chose to drag Hopkins in. I replaced the name of Margaret with the girl’s actual name, however, when I quoted the lines. Margaret is a little girl in the Hopkins poem. Looking at autumn’s falling leaves, Margaret is saddened by the fact of life’s inevitable degeneration. The leaves have to turn yellow and eventually fall. And decay. The poet tells her that she has no choice but accept certain inevitabilities of life. Sorrow is our legacy, Margaret , I said to Margaret’s alter ego in my class. Let
36 comments
Read more

Octlantis

I was reading an essay on octopuses when friend John walked in. When he is bored of his usual activities – babysitting and gardening – he would come over. Politics was the favourite concern of our conversations. We discussed politics so earnestly that any observer might think that we were running the world through the politicians quite like the gods running it through their devotees. “Octopuses are quite queer creatures,” I said. The essay I was reading had got all my attention. Moreover, I was getting bored of politics which is irredeemable anyway. “They have too many brains and a lot of hearts.” “That’s queer indeed,” John agreed. “Each arm has a mind of its own. Two-thirds of an octopus’s neurons are found in their arms. The arms can taste, touch, feel and act on their own without any input from the brain.” “They are quite like our politicians,” John observed. Everything is linked to politics in John’s mind. I was impressed with his analogy, however. “Perhaps, you’re r
34 comments
Read more