Tomichan Matheikal's blog

My champak: view from front yard My Champak tree grows by leaps and bounds. It is now 70+ feet tall in my estimate. When I planted it in 2016, it was a sapling not even half a foot tall. A colleague of mine from school gave it to me on the occasion of Environment Day when the Forest department of the state distributed all sorts of saplings in schools. This colleague had picked up a few saplings one of which was this champak. Then someone told her that champak was an ill omen in homes. So she gave it to me very generously. Since omens don’t intimidate me, I brought it home and planted it right next to my main gate where it is visible to hundreds of people who pass by every day. It is my romantic love for its flowers that prompted me to plant the champak sapling in a prominent place, not any desire to flaunt my daring of superstitions. I’m now grieved to see that the tree is only growing tall day by day and not putting out any bloom. Then someone told me the size of my champak is not...

Poster generated by Copilot AI Women’s sanitary pads were lying in the front yard as I came out of home this morning to pick up the newspaper from the gate. My brother’s dog, which roams around the houses of all three of us siblings at night, had picked up a waste bundle that someone had dumped on the roadside and brought it to my yard probably to explore it in detail. The dog spread the contents of that plastic bag all over. I have been living in Kerala for nine years now. One thing that I noticed right from my first days here is the Malayali [people of Kerala who speak Malayalam] hypocrisy. They are very proud of themselves, their culture, language, literature, literacy, cleanliness, multispecialty hospitals even in very small towns, and eradication of poverty. When it comes to cleanliness, there is a huge irony. The Malayali keeps their surroundings clean by dumping all their waste into some public space like the roadside or the rivers. I live on the roadside and have to deal ...

I have fallen in love with ChatGPT. It happened when I asked it to prepare the terminal examination question paper for my students. The work that used to take me a week was accomplished in minutes by the AI chatbot. ChatGPT takes seconds to return intelligent responses to our queries. But I had to break down the question paper into many sections and so it took minutes instead of seconds. I use the chatbot quite frequently and effectively in my classrooms. It can summarise lessons better than I do, prepare instantaneous test papers, and interpret poetry elegantly. The idea of seeking its help to prepare the question paper for the terminal examination came after I went through CBSE’s sample paper . Click the link I’ve provided here and you will see how much time and effort it will take for anyone to prepare one such question paper. I have spent a lion’s share of my life preparing such question papers and then evaluating the students’ answer sheets. When I went through the sample pa...

  Copilot Designer's illustration of 'satisficing' Satisficing is a portmanteau word coined by Nobel Prize-winning American economist and political scientist. He combined the words ‘satisfy’ and ‘suffice’ into one to describe the human tendency to make a decision that is ‘good enough’ rather than one that is necessarily optimal. Take an example to understand the notion better. Suppose A is searching for his life partner at a matrimonial site. There are so many potential brides who all look good enough. But if A goes on to find the best among them, the one that suits all his criteria and tastes, he will remain a bachelor till death. So what does A do? He satisfices by choosing one that meets his minimum acceptable criteria. When the ruling BJP decided to project Smriti Irani as the next chief minister candidate for Delhi, Herbert Simon forced himself into my consciousness. Smriti Irani lost in the last parliament election to Congress’s Kishori Lal. The margin was a...

  Book Review Title: Days at the Morisaki Bookshop Author: Satoshi Yagisawa Translator: Eric Ozawa Publisher: Manila Press, 2023 Pages: 150 Love is both simple and complex at the same time. As an experience, it is simple. But certain factors such as the relationships it brings and the motives behind the relationships make it quite complex. Japanese writer Satoshi Yagisawa’s debut novel about a second-hand bookshop in Jimbocho, Tokyo, and some people associated with it, is as simple and complex as love itself. Reading this short novel is like bathing in a cool, crystal-clear stream. It refreshes you more and more as you immerse yourself in it. I finished reading it in one go yesterday; it enchanted me. The protagonist is 25-year-old Takako whose boyfriend ditches her. She was too naïve to understand that the young man was only taking advantage of her while he was really in love with another woman. “This guy is rotten to the core,” Uncle Satoru tells Takako about t...

I had a divine appointment the other day. I mean the appointment in Wess Stafford’s statement: “Every child you encounter is a divine appointment.” Little Maria, all of three years, blessed me with a visit. She is the daughter of a niece of mine. I noticed that she was getting as bored as I was with the adult talks on the dining table whose savoury snacks didn’t hold Maria’s attention. Her grandmother, my sister, mentioned that Maria had fallen in love with a little lamb in my brother’s house nearby. “Do you like kittens?” I asked Maria. Maria’s eyes lit up. “Are you ready to climb up the stairs to the terrace?” I became alive too. Maria ran out of the room and pulled up her sandals which needed to be strapped at the back. She did all that while I was trying to identify my slippers among all the footwear that lay outside. Maria ascended the staircase with the agility of a gymnast only to be disappointed to see an empty terrace. I called out to the kittens as I usually do. They d...

Book Review Title: Why do I feel so sad? Your pathway to healing depression Author: Dr Shefali Batra Publisher: Jaico, 2023 Pages: 303 Mental health is as important as physical health, if not more so. Depression is a very common psychological problem all over the world and it requires due attention. By 2030, depression will be the second leading problem worldwide in the health sector, according to various studies. The WHO states that 75% of people with psychological problems do not receive any treatment. For 1.3 billion people, India has only 8,000 psychiatrists, as the Foreword to this book points out. This book is an excellent companion and guide for anyone looking for help in dealing with depression. It gives you the theoretical frameworks related to each of the topics under consideration and then goes on to provide very practical solutions or suggestions. The book is divided into five parts whose titles are self-explanatory. 1.      Know the en...

A view from the Hilltop Resort, Karimkunnam A cousin of mine invited me yesterday to the inauguration of his new venture, a resort. Hilltop Resort at a place called Karimkunnam on Thodupuzha-Pala Road. Karimkunnam is a place on whose hills my boyhood found abundant delights because my mother’s brothers were living in those hills. A few hills belonged to the family entirely. There were rubber trees all over the hills in those days. Rubber has lost its glory among Malayalis now for various reasons. First of all, there isn’t much money in it now. The labour charges are so high in Kerala that the landowner will be left with little more than the cool shade of the rubber trees after the rubber is sold in any form – latex, solid blocks or sheets. No wonder my cousin chopped down all the rubber trees and built a resort there on his hill. It is quite an exotic place whose rustic charm will seep into your heart along with the cool breeze in the evening. You have verdant mountains all aroun...

Fiction Something was amiss on top of the hill. I sensed it in my veins. My veins are the primary source of my awareness. As well as the little wisdom I’m gathering as I go on. I’m not wise. I’m just 30 years young. And I’m going to tell you a story about a woman who is just ten more years older than me. But she has grey hairs all over her head now. Her name is Sujata. I learnt that when I was a ten-year-old boy who was driven by the kind of curiosity that killed the proverbial cat. I was living in the valley whose sunset was always blocked by the hill in the west. That entire hill belonged to one family. Aristocratic family, my mother told me. The history of their aristocracy went back to some Aryan invasion and all that stuff. History never enthused me. But heights did. My history teacher told us about the Eiffel Tower that day in class. The tallest tower in the world. About its 1665 steps. About the grand vision it provided from its height. I imagined myself running up 1665 st...

More than 700,000 people choose to commit suicide every year in the world. That is, nearly 2000 individuals end their lives every day and suicide is the leading cause of death in the age group of 15 to 29. 10 Sep is the World Suicide Prevention Day . Let me join fellow bloggers Manali and Sukaina in their endeavour to draw more people’s attention to the value of life. One of the most persuasive essays on why we should not choose death voluntarily in spite of the ordeals and absurdities of life is The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. Camus’s basic premise is that life is absurd. It has no meaning other than what you give to it. The universe is indifferent to you, if not hostile. The confrontation between the human need for clarity and the chaotic irrationality of the world can lead to existential despair. Suicide is not the answer to that despair, however. Camus looks for a philosophical answer in his essay. Not many people find consolation in philosophy. Most people seek a...

Alfred Prufrock was sitting in a dimly lit café when a young boy, who was yet to reach adolescence, walked in. The boy looked as inquisitive as Prufrock looked flurried. ‘Hello,’ the boy said. ‘You look so… lonely. And sad too.’ ‘Sad? No, not sad. Just… contemplating. I am, as they say, measuring out my life with coffee spoons.’ ‘Aw! That’s strange. On my planet, I measure things by sunsets. I love sunsets. How can you measure life with something so small as a coffee spoon?’ ‘Did you say “my planet”?’ ‘Well, yes. I come from another planet. I’ve been travelling for quite some time, you know. Went to numerous planets and asteroids and met many strange creatures. Quite a lot of them are cranky.’ The boy laughed gently, almost like an adult. Prufrock looked at the boy with some scepticism and suspicion. He was already having too many worries of his own like whether he should part his hair in the middle and roll up the bottoms of his trousers. ‘They call me Little Prince,’ ...

Alexis Zorba, the protagonist of Nikos Kazantzakis’s novel Zorba the Greek , lives life to its fullness. He embraces human experience with his whole heart. He is not interested in rational explanations and intellectual isms. His philosophy, if you can call it that at all, is earthy, spontaneous and passionate. He loves life passionately. He celebrates it. Happiness is a simple affair for him. “I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing happiness is,” he tells us. “A glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else.” You don’t need a lot of things to be happy. Your possessions don’t bring you happiness. All that money you spent on your big house, big car, big everything… It helps to show off. But happiness? No way, happiness doesn’t come that way at all. Zorba loves to play his musical instrument, santouri. He loves to sing. To dance. But don’t get me wrong. He works too. He works hard. There’s no fullness of life without that hard w...

“The more stupid one is, the clearer one is.” That is one of Ivan Karamazov’s numerous profound observations. Ivan is one of the most fascinating characters in literature for me. He is intelligent and troubled but he would rather be stupid and happy. He is sensitive but such sensitivity can drive one to insanity. He is sceptical but he’d rather be a genuine believer in God. But does God exist at all? If He does, is He a benign entity or a malign one? “If there is a God, then He is a malicious and cruel being,” Ivan asserts. On another occasion, we find him tortured by the thought that “If God exists, then, as the children are tortured, He must exist for the sake of tormenting them.” Children’s pains afflict Ivan particularly. Innocence does deserve better particularly if there is a God who cares. Ivan could not accept God because of the evil in the world. An omnipotent God could easily get rid of evil. And God is not only omnipotent but all-loving too. One of Ivan’s fundamental p...