Tomichan Matheikal's blog

AI-generated I am not fond of fish. Fish doesn’t taste like fish, that’s the reason. We get adulterated fish most of the time. In Kerala, my state, traders are reported to use formalin for preserving the freshness of fish. Formalin is used for preserving dead bodies by embalming. You will find me in a fish stall once in a while, though. My cats want fish occasionally, that’s why. Not that they are particularly fond of it. For a change from the regular pellets and packaged wet foods, all delivered promptly by Amazon. Even cats love a change. Most of the time, the entire fish that I buy is consumed by my cats. So much so, Maggie and I have come to think that fish is cat food, not human food. People may have different reasons for not eating any particular food. One of the most endearing reasons I heard recently is that fish is a symbol of the voiceless. People commit atrocities on fish, this person said [I forget who – I read it a couple of weeks back on Magzter]. They suffocate it ...

A scene from Kerala The theme chosen for their monthly blog hop by friends Manali Desai and Sukaina Majeed is water, particularly because March 22 is World Water Day. It is of vital importance to discuss the global water crisis because as the motto of Delhi Jal Board says: Jal hi Jeevan hai , Water is Life . The crisis is only going to become more and more acute as we move on. With a global population clocking 8.5 billion by 2030, the demand for fresh water will rise sharply, especially in urban areas. The climate change, particularly rising temperatures, prolonged droughts, and erratic rainfall patterns, will add significantly to the problem. Ground water is getting depleted in many countries. Consequently, water is likely to be a strategic asset in the near future. Powerful individuals, corporations, and nations may use it as a weapon in several ways. Rivers can be blocked with dams and water supply to neighbouring nations can be manipulated. Ethiopia’s Grand Renaissance Dam o...

I started reading the autobiography of Pope Francis a few days back as mentioned in an earlier post that was inspired by chapter 2 of the book. I’m reading the book slowly, taking my own sweet time, because I want to savour every line of this book which carries so much superhuman tenderness. The book ennobles the reader. The fifth chapter describes a few people of his barrio that the Pope knew as a young man. Two of them are young “girls” who worked as prostitutes. “But these were high-class,” the Pope adds. “They made their appointments by telephone, arranged to be collected by automobile.” La Ciche and La Porota – that’s what they were called. “Years went by,” the Pope writes, “and one day when I was now auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires, the telephone rang in the bishop’s palace. It was la Porota who was looking for me.” Pope Francis was meeting her after many years. “Hey, don’t you remember me? I heard they’ve made you a bishop.” She was a river in full flow, says the Pope....

Henry B Adams, American historian and writer, is believed to have said that “one never knows where a teacher’s influence ends.” As a teacher, I have always striven to keep that maxim in mind while dealing with students. Even if I couldn’t wield any positive influence, I never wished to leave a scar on the psyche of any student of mine. Best of intentions notwithstanding, we make human errors and there may be students who were not quite happy with me especially since I never possessed even the lightest shade of diplomacy. Tactless though I was, I have been fortunate, as a teacher, to have a lot of good memories returning with affection from former students. Let me share the most recent experience. A former student’s WhatsApp message yesterday carried two PDF attachments. One was the dissertation she wrote for her graduation. The other was a screenshot of the Acknowledgement. “A special mention goes to Mr Tomichan Matheikal, my English teacher in higher secondary school, whose moti...

Image by Google Gemini I am reading Pope Franci’s autobiography, Hope . Some of his views on war and justice as expressed in the first pages [I’ve read only two chapters so far] accentuate the difference of this Pope from his predecessors. Many of his views are radical. I knew that Pope Francis was different from the other Popes, but hadn’t expected so much. The title of chapter 2 is taken from Psalm 120 : Too Long Do Live Among Those Who Hate Peace . The psalm was sung by Jewish pilgrims travelling to Jerusalem for religious festivals. It expresses a longing for deliverance from deceitful and hostile enemies. It is a prayer for divine justice. Justice is what Pope Francis seeks in the contemporary world too in chapter 2 of his autobiography. “Each day the world seems more elitist,” he writes, “and each day crueler, toward those who have been cast out and abandoned. Developing countries continue to be drained of their finest natural and human resources for the benefit of a few pr...

Book Review Title: Ram C/o Anandhi Author: Akhil P Dharmajan Translator: Haritha C K Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2025 Pages: 303 T he author tells us in his prefatory note that “this (is) a cinematic novel.” Don’t read it as literary work but imagine it as a movie. That is exactly how this novel feels like: an action-packed thriller. The story revolves around Ram, a young man who lands in Chennai for joining a diploma course in film making, and Anandhi, receptionist of Ram’s college. Then there are their friends: Vetri and his half-sister Reshma, and Malli who is a transgender. An old woman, who is called Paatti (grandmother) by everyone and is the owner of the house where three of the characters live, has an enviably thrilling role in the plot.   In one of the first chapters, Ram and Anandhi lock horns over a trifle. That leads to some farcical action which agitates Paatti’s bees which in turn fly around stinging everyone. Malli, the aruvani (transgender), s...

I wrote a lot more in Feb 2025 than in the past many months. The Blogchatter has been responsible for that with their #WriteAPageADay challenge. My association with this blogging community is rather short: just a little over four years. I’m concluding the Write-a-page-a-day challenge with this retrospective post. With their various ‘challenges’ such as Write-a-page-a-day and A-to-Z , Blogchatter gave me a lot of impetus to write regularly. Writing sustains me as a person more than anything else because there’s no other place where I can express my views and feelings so freely. Even AI [Artificial Intelligence] has accused me, albeit subtly, of being opinionated. Read, if you wish, what ChatGPT said about my blog the other day on my request: here . I took interest in writing long ago when I was a school student. I wrote in Malayalam in those days because I did my entire schooling in a rustic Malayalam medium government-aided school where English was taught by teachers of chemist...

Book Review Title: Strong Woman: Reba Rakshit Author: Ida Jo Pajunen Publisher: Om Books International, 2024 Pages: 218 Reba Rakshit was a rare kind of entertainer. She could lift an elephant on her chest. She would lie on a mat and a huge plank would be placed on her chest. An elephant would walk on that plank. Reba could bear the weight of that elephant though for a few seconds. Reba was born in what now is Bangladesh. She migrated with her sister to Calcutta (today Kolkata) to live with her uncle who promised them good education. That was a decade and a half before India became independent. A man named Bishnu Charan Gosh discovered Reba’s potential and trained her to become a performer. He was running a college of physical education in Calcutta where Reba became a trainee while she was also pursuing regular school studies. Eventually Ghosh made Reba capable of doing many things like breath control using yoga, weight-lifting, and mind control. Soon enough, Ghosh found h...

  Book Review Title: Stone Yard Devotional Author: Charlotte Wood Publisher: Sceptre 2023 Pages: 297 W hen a novel starts with a middle-aged woman giving up her job in despair and entering into retreat in a cloistered convent where soon arrives the bones of a nun who died long ago elsewhere, it may be presumed to be a suspense thriller or crime fiction. Add plague in the background with mice running all around, and it can become horror. Then comes in another character who was absolutely disliked by the narrator in their schooldays. Charlotte Wood’s latest novel has all of these but it is no thriller or crime fiction or horror story. It is an allegory of sorts on very gentle themes like forgiveness and redemption. The narrator has no name in the novel. The nun who comes with the bones of Sister Jenny who died two decades ago was a school classmate of the narrator. Jenny was probably killed by an American missionary priest in Bangkok where the nun was rendering her serv...

“T here’s a story behind Pole Star which is known as Dhruva Nakshatram in our language,” I said to Davis (not his real name), a 14-year-old who thought a bit too much of himself like most youngsters of today. He was with me next to the driver’s seat in my car and I was his driver in his view. “Are you interested in the story?” Davis’s silence told me clearly that he wasn’t. He wasn’t interested in anything except himself and that was the problem which his mother had brought to me. I told him the story, in spite of his indifference. “Dhruva was the son of King Uttanapada and Queen Suniti. His father favoured his other wife, Suruchi, and her son.” “Lucky guys they were, weren’t they?” Davis interrupted. “Who?” “Those kings of olden days. They could have a lot of wives.” “You want a lot of wives?” “Nah,” he was contemptuous. “I want only girlfriends, not wives.” “You don’t want to take up responsibilities, right?” “Who wants to? Would you take up responsibilities if yo...

Illustration by Copilot Designer Tamil Nadu chief minister M K Stalin has once again pitted the Tamil pride against Hindi pride . He has been championing the Dravidian cause against the Aryan Shahs of Delhi for quite some time now. Just last month, he offered a prize of $1 million to anyone who can decode the Indus Valley script which, Stalin believes as I too do, was proto-Dravidian. As a South Indian, I’m on Stalin’s side. The North shouldn’t impose their culture and language and gods on the Southerners. I’m not speaking on behalf of anyone, please. I’m expressing my personal views. If some people of South India want to be bossed over by someone from the North, that’s their wish and I have no problem with it. I don’t want a native version of colonialism. Like Stalin, I too believe that the Indus Valley Civilisation was Dravidian. Like him again, I would like more research to go into it. The truth may take the entire the wind out of the Hindutva sails. Moreover, the steamroller...

Illustration by ChatGPT I have/had many students whose parents are teachers in schools run or aided by the government. These teachers don’t send their own children to their own schools where education is free. They send their children to private schools like the one where I’ve been working. They pay huge fees to teach their children in schools where teachers are paid half of or less than their salaries. This is one of the many ironies about the Kerala society. An article in yesterday’s The Hindu [ A deeper meaning of declining school enrolment ] takes an insightful look at some of the glaring social issues in Kerala’s educational system. One such issue is the rapidly declining student enrolment in government and aided schools in the state. The private schools in the state, on the other hand, are getting more students. People don’t want to send their children to the schools run by the government systems. The chief reason is that the medium of instruction is Malayalam. The second ...

Preface One of the songs that has haunted me all along is By the Rivers of Babylon by Boney M [1978]. It is inspired by the biblical Psalm 137. The Psalm was written after the Babylonian King, Nebuchadnezzar II, conquered the kingdom of Judah and destroyed their most sacred temple in Jerusalem. The Jews were soon exiled to Babylon. Then some Babylonians asked the Jews to sing songs for them. Psalm 137 is a response to that: “How can we sing the Lord’s song in an alien land?” There is profound sorrow in the psalm. Exile and longing for homeland, oppression by enemies, and loss of identity are dominant themes. Boney M succeeded in carrying all those deep emotions and pain in their verses too. As I was wondering what to write for today’s #WriteAPageADay challenge, Boney M’s version of Psalm 137 wafted into my consciousness from the darkness and silence outside my bedroom long before daybreak. How to make it make sense to a reader of today who may know nothing about the Jewish exile ...