Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Image created by Copilot Designer Each New Year of mine was invariably overshadowed by the preceding Christmas. My entire childhood was lived out in a remote and nondescript village of central Kerala where electricity arrived when I was in high school. New Year meant nothing more to the villagers than the replacement of the old wall calendar with a new one. Just like the earth which went on revolving around the sun without ever knowing the human markers of time, the villagers continued their routine life on the first of January too in their farms. The Christmas hangover would linger, however. The crib was still there waiting to be removed. The star made of bamboo strips and mist-resistant paper was already brought down in all probability. Most people couldn’t afford to maintain, beyond a week, the oil lamps or the paraffin wax candles which were lit inside those stars with much care and caution. The crepe paper decorations in the crib would have begun to sag. There was no plastic i...

According to the data presented in the Rajya Sabha by the government of India’s ministry of external affairs, more than 200,000 Indians are giving up their citizenship every year. The number is increasing rapidly year after year even when the prime minister keeps telling us that we are going to be a $5-trillion economy. Well, Indians have stopped taking their prime minister seriously, it seems. When we realise that Indians are choosing to be Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Nepalis, and Burmese, we may think the news is fake. But the information is given by our own government and it is true. Too many Indians are leaving India. “For rich Indians, home is no longer where the heart is,” writes Prabhu Chawla in the Sunday Standard , pointing out that 4300 millionaires including stars like Virat Kohli and family have abandoned India in 2024. Last year, the figure of such millionaires was 5100. In other words, it is not only the ambitious middle class that chooses to quit India. They are no...

Illustration by Copilot Designer 1.      Anachronism Ekalavya is eager to learn Unlike his contemporaries Who are buried in digital graves.   ‘What’s anachronism?’ He queries. ‘Anachronism is,’ says Bharadvaja, He pauses, muses, and pronounces: ‘Sita Devi’s chastity was questioned By a barber named Al Ansari bin Laden, According to the latest grave-digging Of Archaeological Survey of India.’     2.      Exorcist   History textbooks are haunted by the ghosts Of Akbar and Babur and Gandhi and Nehru. So the Prime Minister decides to become The Exorcist of the nation In order to save Ekalavyas From graves that refuse to be Closed by sward shroud.     3.      Redemption   Ekalavya opens his new history textbook. Words look like petrifying ghosts That want blood, Ekalavya’s blood. So he chooses to leave his country And settle down in Tr...

All images AI-generated When Gukesh Dommaraju became the Chess Grandmaster at the age of 18, I was reminded of my personal passion for the game as a young boy. I learnt the game when I was ten years or so and I was so passionate about it that I picked up a book by none less than Bobby Fischer, the most famous chess champion of the time, to learn master strategies. I lacked the commitment of Gukesh, however, and hence didn’t become any champion. But I loved playing the game in those days. I loved the strategic moves it demands. The game is like life in many ways. I failed to learn the strategies of a successful life, however. That’s a different matter. You can be a loser in practical life in spite of knowing a lot of theoretic strategies. As we are moving on to a New Year , I am tempted to make a comparison between chess and life, though I failed to convert the theories to practice. Never mind my personal failures. My life has reached its autumn, and so my successes and failures are...

Has Christmas been hijacked by Santa Claus and his snow cap? And also by plastic? This is a concern raised by a friend who is also a Catholic priest. Watching the Christmas celebrations around me in the last few days in various places – religious as well as secular – I know my friend’s concern is genuine. Christmas has been “Caesarianized,” he says. The spiritual preparation during the Advent season has given way to Santa Claus and his jingle bells. To discount sales in shopping malls. What’s worse, various Christian organisations send out carol teams on floridly decorated open vehicles equipped with high decibel loudspeakers that shatter all the peace while blaring out carols on ‘Peace to people with goodwill.’ It is a Christmas without Jesus. Santa Clauses tower far above the diminutive figure of infant Jesus, if the latter is there at all in the carol teams and other celebrations. Look at any commercial brought out during the season and you will think that Christmas is all abo...

One of the biggest ironies of Buddhism is that Buddha never endorsed the belief in God as done by organised religions but he ended up becoming one such God. Buddha did not advocate for prayer in the sense of appealing to a divine entity for favours or intervention. But his followers of today seem to be giving undue importance to rituals and offerings. Something similar happened to Jesus and his teachings too. Jesus was trying to reform his religion, Judaism, by making it more humane. He wanted to redeem Judaism from its meaningless rituals and displays of devotion . Religion is meaningless and even dangerous unless it touches the believer’s heart and transforms it. Jesus was not interested in the rubrics and the regulations prescribed by the priests of his religion. His primary concern was love and relationships. What good is religion unless it helps you to love your fellow human beings? “If anyone says ‘I love God’ and hates his brother, he is a liar,” Jesus’ beloved disciple Jo...

Book Review Title: The Covenant of Water Author: Abraham Verghese Publisher: Grove Press UK, 2023 Pages: 724 “What defines a family isn’t blood but the secrets they share.” This massive book explores the intricacies of human relationships with a plot that spans almost a century. The story begins in 1900 with 12-year-old Mariamma being wedded to a 40-year-old widower in whose family runs a curse: death by drowning. The story ends in 1977 with another Mariamma, the granddaughter of Mariamma the First who becomes Big Ammachi [grandmother]. A lot of things happen in the 700+ pages of the novel which has everything that one may expect from a popular novel: suspense, mystery, love, passion, power, vulnerability, and also some social and religious issues. The only setback, if it can be called that at all, is that too many people die in this novel. But then, when death by drowning is a curse in the family, we have to be prepared for many a burial. The Kerala of the pre-Independ...

Susmesh Chandroth in his kitchen “Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought,” Poet Shelley told us long ago. I was reading an interview with a prominent Malayalam writer, Susmesh Chandroth, this morning when Shelley returned to my memory. Chandroth says he left Kerala because the state had too much of affluence which is not conducive for the production of good art and literature. He chose to live in Kolkata where there is the agony of existence and hence also its ecstasies. He’s right about Kerala’s affluence. The state has eradicated poverty except in some small tribal pockets. Today almost every family in Kerala has at least one person working abroad and sending dollars home making the state’s economy far better than that of most of its counterparts. You will find palatial houses in Kerala with hardly anyone living in them. People who live in some distant foreign land get mansions constructed back home though they may never intend to come and live here. There are ...

“Weren’t you a worm till the other day?” The plant asks the butterfly. “That’s ancient history,” the butterfly answers. “Why don’t you look at the present reality which is much more beautiful?” “How can I forget that past?” The plant insists. “You ate almost all my leaves. Had not my constant gardener discovered your ravage in time and removed you from my frail limbs, I would have been dead long before you emerged from your contemplation with beautiful wings.” “I’m sorry, my dear Nandiarvattam ji. Did I have a choice? The only purpose of the existence of caterpillars is to eat leaves. Eat and eat. Until we get into the cocoon and wait for our wings to unfold. A new reality to unfold. It's a relentless hunger that creates butterflies.” “Your new reality is my painful old history. I still remember how I trembled foreseeing my death. Death by a worm!” “I wish I could heal you with my kisses.” “You’re doing that, thank you. But…” “I know. It hurts, the history thing. I’...

This is a promotional post, let me be honest.  I've started a YouTube channel. A way to keep me busy and cheerful during the retirement that I'm opting for from March 2025. But teaching runs in my veins. So I will continue to teach for as long as I can.  My students have stopped listening in class saying that they can learn from YouTube. So I thought of shifting myself to YouTube. Let my students and anybody's students get better interpretations of lessons than what YouTube is currently providing. That's my intention.  Since students of today want everything in capsule form, I intend to present all the lessons in just ten minutes. My presentations are titled A Lesson In 10 Minutes . Above is my ten-minute lesson on the poem Keeping Quiet by Pablo Neruda. 

Is India joining the ranks of North Korea, China, and Russia when it comes to the freedom of the media? India’s rank in the World Press Freedom Index as well as many other similar indices has been declining rapidly in the recent years. The cover story of the December issue of The Caravan magazine, one of the few remaining independent journals in the country, is about how Mukesh Ambani has become the media manager of Narendra Modi. Ambani’s Reliance bought News 18 in July 2014. The year is significant. Modi had just come to power in Delhi. Eventually News 18 bought off many TV channels and journals. The Caravan informs us that using these media Modi is doing exactly what Kim Jong Un has been doing in North Korea, Putin in Russia, and Xi Jinping in China. The first major casualty, when the government takes control of the mass media, is Suppression of free speech and dissent . The Caravan reveals how scores of journalists who refused to propagate what the government wanted the...

Illustration by Copilot Designer Personally, I’m not much concerned about whether the gods are real simply because, for me, they aren’t. I can accept the mysterious nature of the cosmos, the realms that science hasn’t fathomed yet and may never, and the awe that some of it inspires in a lot of people including me. But I won’t ever find myself imagining a god that looks like a man or woman, as is the case with most of our divine entities. What will a god do with a gender, in the first place? Forget the cumbersome physical masses of their bodies which will have to obey Newton’s laws of motion in the ethereal spaces. That is why I was amused when Facebook decided to enlighten me with a booklet titled Is the Bible True ? You can download it free of charge from the site Life, Hope & Truth . It being a Sunday when life is a lot relaxed for me, I decided to explore the material which Facebook seemed to thrust into the core of my being after censoring two of my recent posts for “going...

When fellow blogger Sakshi Varma invited me join a blog-hop on the theme of disability, in connection with the International Day of Persons with Disabilities [IDPD, 3 Dec], the first person who came to my mind was Christopher Boone. Before I come to Christopher, let me tell you about Augustin (not his real name), who was my classmate in high school. Augustin’s right leg had been rendered limp due to polio in childhood. But his greatest passion was football. During the games period, he would be there on the football ground, running around as much as he could, in passionate exuberance, shouting to others what they should do, though he hardly got an opportunity to touch the ball. Whenever there was a football match, Augustin would be there on the side of the ground, holding on to the branch of a tree firmly, watching the game, with his limp leg flying in the air as if he was kicking the ball. He was engrossed totally in the game. I loved watching him rather than the game. His passion...

Liza : You are sheer humbug, Professor Higgins. You think you’re great because you have a lot of knowledge. And because you belong to the wealthy class. But I know what you are. Sheer Humbug. And I also know how to deal with you. Dear Reader, I’m writing this post for a blog hop on Rewriting the ending of a book . The character who speaks the above dialogue belongs to George Bernard Shaw’s classic play Pygmalion which Hollywood converted into an eminently successful movie, My Fair Lady . The movie did give a different ending to the play doing some injustice to Shaw. Shaw was not alive when Hollywood made the movie. He wouldn’t have liked the movie’s alternative ending simply because he was against sentimental romance. Even love was a philosophy for Shaw. He would have condemned the movie quoting Walter Savage Landor that “to those who have the greatest power of loving, love is a secondary affair.” Let me offer a different ending. For Blogchatter blog hop. Liza is ordered...