Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Changing Costumes of a King We overcame kings and established our own government in the name of democracy. Has anything changed substantially, however? It seems we just replaced the crown with a bandi coat. I pay all sorts of taxes every day, like all other normal citizens. On top of that, my government extracts large sums from me occasionally in the name of fines for offences that no one is aware of. Yesterday I paid INR 500 as fine + 4.05 as credit card charge. The offence hasn’t been made clear to me in spite of my complaint and enquiries. This is the second time the MoRTH [Ministry of Road Transport and Highways] extracts the same sum as fine for an offence which no one knows anything about. The first time it happened I went personally to my Regional Transport Office [RTO] and demanded evidence for my offence. They said they never provide any evidence. “The computerised system consisting of a network of surveillance cameras detects offences,” I was told. “What about the vide...

They were born under my care, tiny throbs of life, eyes still shut to the world. They grew up under my constant care. I changed their bed and the sheets regularly making sure they were always warm and comfortable. When one of them didn’t open her eyes after a fortnight of her birth, I rang up my cousin who is a vet and got the appropriate prescription that gave her the light of day in just two days. I watched each one of them stumble through their first steps. Today they were adopted. I personally took them to their new home, a tiny house of a family that belongs to the class that India calls BPL [Below Poverty Line]. I didn’t know them at all until I stopped my car a little away from their small house, at the nearest spot my car could possibly reach. They lived in another village altogether, some 15 km from mine. Sometimes 15 km can make a world of difference. A man who looked as old as me had come to my house in the late afternoon. “I’d like to adopt your kittens,” he said. He...

Books become my ideal companions in times of political turmoil. Right now, as you’re reading these lines, there are dozens of active armed conflicts going on around the world. Besides, developed countries like America are asking foreign students as well as others to leave. The global economy is experiencing significant instability, characterised by weak growth projections, persistent inflation, high debt levels, and geopolitical conflicts. Even when a country like India advertises itself as becoming the third largest economy, the living conditions of the poor aren’t showing any improvement. Nay, the world isn’t becoming any better than it ever was. It's when such realisations hit you from all sides, you need the consolations of an abiding hobby. Reading is at the top of my list of such hobbies. First of all, books help us understand current events in a broader context . They can reveal patterns in history: how democracies falter, how propaganda spreads, how resistance movements...

  When Indira Gandhi imposed a draconian Emergency on India 50 years ago on this day (25 June), I had just completed the first train journey of my life and started an entirely different kind of life. I had just joined a seminary as what they call an ‘aspirant’. One of the notice boards of the seminary always displayed the front page of an English newspaper – The Indian Express , if I recall correctly. I was only beginning to read English publications and so the headlines about Emergency didn’t really catch my attention. Since no one discussed politics in the seminary, it took me all of six months to understand the severity of the situation in the country. When I was travelling back home for Christmas vacation, the posters on the roadsides caught my attention. That’s how I began to take note of what was happening in the name of Emergency. A 15-year-old schoolboy doesn’t really understand the demise of democracy. It took me a few years and a lot of hindsight to realise the gravit...

India’s Central Board of Film Certification has directed the makers of a movie to change its title just because it contains the name of Janaki which is a synonym of Sita, the Hindu goddess. Worse still, the Board has demanded a name change for the titular character in the movie too – from Janaki to Jayanthi. The Government of India is presumably formulating laws banning the use of certain names - like: ·       Rama in zoos: we can’t have monkeys hailing Jai Ram to their leader. ·       Durga in gyms: how can we have Durgas lifting dumbbells? ·       Lakshmi in banks: the goddess of wealth deserves better than being reduced to a finance firm offering 3.5% interest. You are welcome to give more suggestions if you are a genuine nationalist in India. You can give other valuable suggestions too like the nationalists in West Bengal are demanding a ban on the consumption of fish because fish was one of the inc...

From X Amit Shah turned a prophet recently. A day will come when those who speak English in India will feel ashamed, he prophesied . It’s high time his son felt ashamed of his English which is quite hilarious to say the least. But let’s look at more honourable right-wingers and their children. Nirmala Sitharaman, finance minister, speaks chaste English, and her daughter studied in London School of Economics like the mother. Will they have to be ashamed too? What about Smriti Irani whose communication is heavily English-oriented? Maneka Gandhi is another fan of Amit Shah’s cultural nationalism though she sent her son Varun Gandhi to London School of Economics as well as Oxford. Ravi Shankar Prasad’s daughter, Aditi Prasad, also studied in the UK. The daughters of Subramanian Swamy studied and worked in Harvard and other top US institutions. Shouldn’t they all feel ashamed first? There’s an excess of hypocrisy about the whole bandwagon of BJP’s cultural nationalism. Mr Modi himsel...

From The Hindu Whenever a policeman waves my car down, a flicker of indignation rises in me, tinged with a trace of ironic amusement. I was taking a shortcut yesterday morning when a constable stopped my car right in front of a big ditch on a narrow rural road. It was a strategic point: no one could speed away ignoring the police because of the rainwater-filled ditch that spanned the entire width of the road ahead. Another constable came with a breathalyser and asked me to blow into it which I did with a smirk that was intended to convey my indignation. First of all, it was too early in the day for any normal person to be drunk. Secondly, they chose a place which revealed in all its gruesome ugliness that the government didn’t give a f*#k to the safety or wellness of the citizens, travellers in this case. Kerala is a state where an average of over 130 road accidents take place every day. 48,841 accidents occurred on Kerala’s roads in the year of 2024, according to the website of...

Courtesy Copilot Designer Fiction At some point in K’s narrative, I became enlightened. He’s telling the truth pretending it to be a lie. No lie can have such emotional underpinning. That realisation was my enlightenment. We were a group of nine men, all sexagenarians like me, gathered at Adithyan’s residence for an alumni get-together. We were meeting together after many years though a few of us met each other once in a while on some occasions like a wedding or a funeral. While the third round of drinks was being poured, Dominic said, “Hey, why don’t we play a small game before dinner?” Each one of us had to speak about himself for three-four minutes continuously and tell only lies. “Telling lies credibly is a political skill and a literary art,” Dominic added. We all took the game with the characteristic enthusiasm of intoxicated nostalgia. Dominic started the game on everyone’s insistence and spoke about his sleeping through a landslide that had brought down to slush almos...

Ancient India was a powerhouse of new concepts in mathematics and astronomy, asserts William Dalrymple’s new book, The Golden Road . India stood out most dramatically in scientific rather than spiritual ideas. Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, wrote in his classic Discovery of India : “It is remarkable that the Indians, though apparently detached from life, were yet intensely curious about it, and this curiosity led them to science.” Why does the present prime minister of the country choose to highlight the religious contributions? Well, you know the answer. While reading Dalrymple yesterday, I was reminded of a math prof I had for my graduation course. Baby was his first name and I can’t recall the surname. ‘Baby’ was a common name for men in Kerala of the mid-twentieth century. The present General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) is a 71-year-old Baby from Kerala. Our Prof Baby was a middle-aged man who knew a lot more than mathematics. One day ...

“Do you serve momos?” I asked the aging man in Monkz Café, the only stall that was open at about 11 this morning when I visited The Old Monk Food Street in my hometown of Thodupuzha. According to the omniscient Google, this is probably the only place in this town where momos are available. “What?” the man who managed everything – brewing tea/coffee, serving snacks, and collecting the cash – nearly scowled. I repeated the word ‘momo’ in singular since Malayalam has an aversion for plurals and the man’s demeanour made me defensive. He gave me a smile that was typically Malayali: mocking as well as naughty. That smile made me wonder whether the word ‘momo’ has some vulgar connotation in Malayalam. I told him to give me a dal vada and a coffee, a common order in a Malayali tea shop. As I sat in the elaborate food court which was empty except for a group of youngsters and one other client, I observed that all the stalls in the ‘food street’ remained closed. A few shutters were par...

From CNN  whose headline is:  Holy cow! India is the world's largest beef exporter The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon is perhaps the only novel I’ve read in which food plays a significant, though not central, role, particularly in deepening the reader’s understanding of Christopher Boone’s character. Christopher, the protagonist, is a 15-year-old autistic boy. [For my earlier posts on the novel, click here .] First of all, food is a symbol of order and control in the novel. Christopher’s relationship with food is governed by strict rules and routines. He likes certain foods and detests a few others. “I do not like yellow things or brown things and I do not eat yellow or brown things,” he tells us innocently. He has made up some of these likes and dislikes in order to bring some sort of order and predictability in a world that is very confusing for him. The boy’s food preferences are tied to his emotional state. If he is served a breakfast o...

Pearl Spot or Karimeen You won’t expect fish to be staple diet in a state like Rajasthan just as you don’t find millets in Kerala’s regular cuisine. Food is deeply intertwined with local cultures; it reflects history, geography, climate, religious beliefs, social structures, and economic conditions. Fish has been a regular presence on the Malayali dining table for centuries thanks to the state’s 600 km of coastline and 44 major rivers, not to mention countless rivulets and streams. My childhood reeked of sardines and mackerels, the most abundant fishes in our region. Fishmongers came on bicycles selling these two varieties usually, probably because they were the cheapest. These two varieties are becoming extinct now, I’m afraid; they are not seen much in the markets. My cats do miss them occasionally. The queen of the Malayali dinner menu is undoubtedly the pearl spot, known as karimeen in Malayalam. This fish can appear in infinite varieties on the dining table, karimeen pollic...