Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Front pages of Newspapers in Delhi on Modi's birthday Yesterday the newspapers in Delhi (and many other places too) carried full page photo of Narendra Modi to celebrate his 75 th birthday. It was sycophancy at its zenith in the history of India’s print media. At no other point in the country’s history had the newspaper industry stooped so low. The first Prime Minister of the country was a man who encouraged the media to be critical of him. Nehru appreciated cartoons that caricatured him mercilessly. Criticism, particularly in the press, helped Nehru keep his ego under check. Shankar’s Weekly was the best cartoon magazine of those times. Launched in 1948 by K Shankar Pillai, the weekly featured political cartoons, satire and humorous articles. It criticised politicians mercilessly by caricaturing or satirising them. Nehru was a prime target. And the PM wasn’t upset. On the contrary, he appreciated Shankar Pillai’s efforts to make the nation, particularly its political leade...

As Mr Narendra Modi completes 75, let me extend heartiest greetings from a faithful critic of his. May he live long and work for a better India, at least better than what he has made of it in the last decade. It is a different matter that he expelled many of his partymen at the age of 75 from active life. The leader of the RSS, the organisation that shaped Modi’s ideology, reminded Modi a few weeks back that “When you turn 75, it means you should stop now and make way for others.” Of course, we know that Modi won’t listen to anyone simply because he doesn’t consider anyone worthy of giving him counsel. I can write a voluminous book on how Modi could (and should) change himself on his 75 th birthday so that the nation will change itself revolutionarily. As a fatalist, however, I desist from doing anything of the sort and console myself that Modi ji is part of India’s current destiny. When the Saturn changes its position in the cosmic setup, India’s destiny will alter too. Wait for tha...

I’ve been a bit out of sorts lately. I couldn’t do anything properly. Not even reading. My blogging met with unusual intervals and I ascribed that to writer’s block though my heart said it wasn’t. The whole mood changed today, a few minutes back. Life is so simple, sometimes. My car’s music system had stopped functioning a few weeks back. I gave my car for an earlier-than-usual service because driving had felt as dull as a movie without dialogue or food without salt ever since the music system went silent. The car was serviced but the music didn’t turn on. “You’ll have to change the speakers,” the service mechanic said. I managed to find time this morning to get the speakers changed. And my life changed radically. Happiness is so simple an affair. The young boy who was replacing the speakers turned on the stereo system as he was working and the song that came instantly was from a Malayalam movie of 1989. Let me give the link to the song and the scene in the movie below. I’m sur...

Illustration by Copilot Designer Why did India agree to play Pakistan at all if the animosity runs so deep that Indian players could not even extend the customary handshake: a simple ritual that embodies the very essence of sportsmanship? Cricket is not war, in the first place. When a nation turns a game into a war, it does not defeat its rival; it only wages war on its own culture, poisoning its acclaimed greatness. India which claims to be Viswaguru , the world’s Guru, is degenerating itself day after day with mounting hatred against everyone who is not Hindu. How can we forget what India did to a young cricket player named Mohammed Siraj , especially in this context? In the recent test series against England, India achieved an unexpected draw because of Siraj. 1113 balls and 23 wickets. He was instrumental in India’s series-levelling victory in the final Test at the Oval and was declared the Player of the Match. But India did not celebrate him. Instead, it mocked him for his o...

Book Discussion An Introductory Note : This is not a book review but a reflection on one of the many themes in The Infatuations , novel by Javier Marias. If you have any intention of reading the novel, please be forewarned that this post contains spoilers. For my review of the book, without spoilers, read an earlier post: The Infatuations (2013). D eath can reshape the reality for the survivors of the departed. For example, a man’s death can entirely alter the lives of his surviving family members: his wife and children, particularly. That sounds like a cliché. Javier Marias’ novel, The Infatuations , shows us that death can alter a lot more; it can reshape meanings, relationships, and even morality of the people affected by the death. Miguel Deverne is killed by an abnormal man right in the beginning of the novel. It seems like an accidental killing. But it isn’t. There are more people than the apparently insane killer involved in the crime and there are motives which are di...

I didn’t write anything in the last few days. Nor did I feel any urge to write. I don’t know if this lack of interest to write is what’s called writer’s block. Or is it simple disenchantment with whatever is happening around me? We’re living in a time that offers much, too much, to writers. The whole world looks like a complex plot for a gigantic epic. The line between truth and fiction has disappeared. Mass murders have become no-news. Animals get more compassion than fellow human beings. Even their excreta are venerated! Folk tales are presented as scientific truths while scientific truths are sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. When the young generation in Nepal set fire to their Parliament and Supreme Court buildings, they were making an unmistakable statement: that they are sick of their political leaders and their systems. Is there any country whose leaders don’t sicken their citizens? I’m just wondering. Maybe, there are good leaders still left in a few coun...

Book Review Title: Whose Rama? [Malayalam] Author: T S Syamkumar Publisher: D C Books, Kerala Pages: 352 Rama may be an incarnation of God Vishnu, but is he as noble a man [ Maryada Purushottam ] as he is projected to be by certain sections of Hindus? This is the theme of Dr Syamkumar’s book, written in Malayalam. There is no English translation available yet. Rama is a creation of the Brahmins, asserts the author of this book. The Ramayana upholds the unjust caste system created by Brahmins for their own wellbeing. Everyone else exists for the sake of the Brahmin wellbeing. If the Kshatriyas are given the role of rulers, it is only because the Brahmins need such men to fight and die for them. Valmiki’s Rama too upheld that unjust system merely because that was his Kshatriya-dharma, allotted by the Brahmins. One of the many evils that Valmiki’s Rama perpetrates heartlessly is the killing of Shambuka, a boy who belonged to a low caste but chose to become an ascetic. The...

Illustration by Copilot Designer I was trying to navigate the moonscape they call a ‘national highway’ when my shoe vanished into a crater big enough to host the G20 summit. Out of it rose a tall figure, crowned and regal, though with a slight limp. “Maveli!” I exclaimed. “Yes,” he said grimly. “Your roads are terrible. I thought the netherworld was bad, but this—this is hell on asphalt.” I helped him up. “Don’t worry, Maveli, our leaders say we’re heading toward becoming a global economic superpower. See, even Donald Trump is impotent before our might.”   Maveli frowned. “Yes, yes. I saw your leader guffawing in the company of Putin and Xi Jinping. When he’s in the company of world leaders, he behaves like a little boy who’s got his coveted toy.” “Are you a little jealous of him, Maveli?” I asked. “I have reasons to be, but I’m not. Let him enjoy his limelight. A day will come when history will put its merciless foot on his head and send him to his own Patala.” Tha...

  Annanya Gulia Annanya Gulia is a grade 12 student of Army Public School, Noida. A former colleague of mine in Delhi, who is now Annanya’s English teacher, drew my attention to the remarkable poetic gift of the young girl. I would like to present one of the poems here. Coming from a teenager who lives in the heartless National Capital Region of India, this poem deserves a deep look. The central theme is the value of lived experience over conventional success. The young poet emphasises that marks and certificates, often seen as measures of achievement, are not what endure. Instead, intangible qualities such as kindness, resilience, curiosity, patience, courage, and the lessons from scars, form the true wealth that she will carry forward. Superficial recognition is not what she hankers after but a celebration of inner growth. What struck me particularly is the rich and vivid imagery employed in the poem. “No rolled-up mark sheets like battle flags” underscores the exaggerated im...

Part of my personal library Books sustain me the most. How do I choose my books? Characters? Themes? Plot? I love serious literature. When I say my beloved writers are Dostoevsky, Kazantzakis, Kafka, and Camus, you will understand what I mean by ‘serious’ literature. These writers have everything: complex characters, philosophical themes, and gripping plots – things I look for in fiction. Take Dostoevsky , for example. His novels probe the deepest recesses of the human soul, expressing the tensions between faith and doubt, freedom and responsibility, sin and redemption. His characters wrestle with conscience, guilt, and the search for meaning. Life is at once tragic, fragile, and capable of transcendence in the novels of this inimitable genius. The Greek Nikos Kazantzakis explores the human spirit caught between earthly passions and transcendent longings, portraying life as a ceaseless struggle between flesh and spirit, despair and hope. His works taught me that the meaning of...

Image by Copilot Designer Dear S, I don’t know if you’d even remember me after all these decades, but I find myself writing to you as if it were only yesterday that we parted ways. You were one of the few friends I had at school. You may be amused to know that a drawing of yours that you gifted me stayed with me until I left Kerala after school. Half a century later, I still remember that beautiful pencil drawing, the picture of a vallam (Kerala’s canoe) resting on a shore beneath a coconut tree that slanted over a serene river on whose other bank was an undulating hilly landscape. A few birds flew happily in the sky. Though it was all done in pencil, absolutely black and white, my memories of it carry countless colours. I wonder where you are now. A few years later, when I returned to Kerala on holiday, I did visit your village to enquire about you. But the village had changed much and your hut on the hill wasn’t seen anymore. Maybe, you moved on. Maybe, you took up your father’s...

Image by Copilot Designer I am a member of a quirky WhatsApp group named ‘The Real Saints.’ With only 15 members, the group is unusually vibrant with one post or another popping up every now and then. Everything under the sun is grist to this group’s carnivalesque mill whose members belong to diverse professions: banker, lawyer, businessman, jeweller, entrepreneur, teacher, and – believe it or not – a Catholic priest. All of us had studied together for two years in the mid-1970s in Kochi. That was probably the only thing that united us. Otherwise, we were all as different from each other as oil and vinegar. But there is a streak of eccentricity in all of us, I think. Probably, it is that eccentricity that keeps us together. One is a staunch Modi supporter and one (that’s me) is an equally staunch Modi-basher. There are hardcore Congressmen and equally hardcore Marxists. But we have never had a fight at any time anywhere – neither in real physical plains nor in the digital realms. ...

Illustration by Gemini AI A few months back, a clinical psychiatrist asked me whether anyone in my family ever suffered from insanity. “All of us are insane to some degree,” I wanted to tell her. But I didn’t because there was another family member with me. We had taken a youngster of the family for counselling. I had forgotten the above episode until something happened the other day which led me to write last post . The incident that prompted me to write that post brought down an elder of my family from the pedestal on which I had placed him simply because he is a very devout religious person who prays a lot and moves about in the society like the gentlest soul that ever lived in these not-so-gentle terrains. I also think that the severe flu which descended on me that night was partly a product of my disillusionment. The realisation that one’s religion and devotion that guided one for seven decades hadn’t touched one’s heart even a little bit was a rude shock to me. What does re...

Illustration by Gemini AI There are too many people, including in my extended family. who love God so much that other people have no place in their hearts. God fills their hearts. They go to church or other similar places every day and meet their God. I guess they do. But they return home from the place of worship only to pour out the venom in their hearts on those around them. When I’m vexed by such ‘religious’ people I consult Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov in which there are some characters who are acutely vexed by spiritual questions. Let me leave Ivan Karamazov to himself, as he has been discussed too much already. In Book II, Chapter 4 [ A lady of Little Faith ], a troubled woman comes to Father Zosima, the wise monk, and confesses her spiritual struggle. “I long to love God,” she says. She knows that she cannot love God without loving her fellow human beings, or at least doing some service to them. The truth is, she says, “I cannot bear people. The closer they ...