Tomichan Matheikal's blog

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...

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...

Book Review Title: My Haven Author: Ruchi Chandra Verma Pages: 161 T his little novel is a surfeit of sugar and honey. All the characters that matter are young employees of an IT firm in Bengaluru. One of them, Pihu, 23 years and all too sweet and soft, falls in love with her senior colleague, Aditya. The love is sweetly reciprocated too. The colleagues are all happy, furthermore. No jealousy, no rivalry, nothing that disturbs the utopian equilibrium that the author has created in the novel. What would love be like in a utopia? First of all, there would be no fear or insecurity. No fear of betrayal, jealousy, heartbreak… Emotional security is an essential part of any utopia. There would be complete trust between partners, without the need for games or power struggles. Every relationship would be built on deep understanding, where partners complement each other perfectly. Miscommunication and misunderstanding would be rare or non-existent, as people would have heightened emo...

Book Review Title: A Maverick in Politics Author: Mani Shankar Aiyar Publisher: Juggernaut, New Delhi, 2024 Pages: 410 A politician’s memoirs will be intertwined with the history of his country. Mani Shankar Aiyar’s book is no exception. This is the second part of the author’s memoirs and it deals with the years from 1991 to 2024. The very opening sentence reassures you that this is a continuation from the last book: “I returned to Delhi elated and triumphant to find two sets of invitations to dinner from the two rival contestants for the leadership of the Congress party.” The first few chapters describe what Aiyar did as an MP both in his constituency and in the parliament as well as wherever he was given responsibilities. His proximity to Rajiv Gandhi had given him an edge over many other Congressmen, and Sonia Gandhi gave him many important duties especially attending meetings and other programmes abroad. After all, Aiyar was in the Indian Foreign Service before quitti...

Lubna Shibu Book Review Title: Into the Wandering Multiverse Author: Lubna Shibu Publisher: Book Leaf , 2024 Pages: 23 Poetry serves as a profound medium for self-reflection. It offers a canvas where emotions, thoughts, and experiences are distilled into words. Writing poetry is a dive into the depths of one’s consciousness, exploring facets of the poet’s identity and feelings that are often left unspoken. Poets are introverts by nature, I think. Poetry is their way of encountering other people. I was reading Lubna Shibu’s debut anthology of poems while I had a substitution period in a section of grade eleven today at school. One student asked me if she could have a look at the book as I was moving around ensuring discipline while the students were engaged in their regular academic tasks. I gave her the book telling her that the author was a former student in this very classroom just a few years back. I watched the student reading a few poems with some amusement. Then I ask...

  Book Review Title: The Last Courtesan: Writing my mother’s memoir Author: Manish Gaekwad Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2023 Pages: 185 Writing the biography of one’s mother who was a courtesan is not quite a pleasant task. Manish Gaekwad undertakes that arduous task in this book and does a fairly eminent job with it. ‘Courtesan’ may not be quite the exact translation of ‘tawaif,’ which is what Rekha, Gaekwad’s mother, was. A courtesan is essentially a sex worker whose clients are wealthy men. But a tawaif is primarily an artiste, a singer of ghazals as well as a dancer. Sex is part of that job, no doubt. When a woman sings lines like Apna bana le meri jaan / Haye re main tere qurbaan [Make me yours, my love / I am your sacrifice] to a man, sex becomes a natural climax of the show. Rekha is a tawaif. She tells her own story in this book. The author writes the narrative as if his mother is telling him her life’s story. Towards the end of the narrative, Rekha asse...

Book Review Title: Survival at Stake Author: Poorva Joshipura Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2023 Pages: 317 (including over 100 pages of Notes) E verything on planet earth is interconnected. The survival of one depends on the survival of another. That is the fundamental message of Poorva Joshipura’s book, Survival at Stake . An example from the book for that interconnectedness: “Phytoplankton are eaten by small zooplankton, who are consumed by larger zooplankton, who are consumed by fish, who are consumed by sharks – you get the picture.” The phytoplankton, in turn, requires the whales for oxygen supply. The relative pronoun ‘who’ is used by the author for the animals intentionally. She believes that humans are just another species of animals and the undue importance given to this species has been immensely detrimental to the other species as well as the planet. We, humans, have misused the animals in many ways: for food, sports (hunting as well as games like cockfigh...

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...

Book Review Title: Why do you fear my way so much? Author: G N Saibaba Publisher: Speaking Tiger, New Delhi, 2022 Pages: 216 G N Saibaba breathed his last on 12 Oct 2024 at the age of 57. It may be more correct to say that he was killed by the government of his country just as Rev Stan Swamy and a lot many others were. Stan Swamy was an octogenarian, suffering from severe Parkinson’s disease and other ailments, when he was arrested under the draconian UAPA. He died in prison at the age of 84 labelled by his government as a traitor. G N Saibaba was a professor of English in Delhi University when he was arrested in 2014 under UAPA for alleged links with treasonous Maoist groups. Polio had rendered him absolutely incapable of free movement right from childhood. The prison authorities deprived him even of his wheelchair, making life incredibly brutal for him in the Anda cell of Nagpur Central Prison. The egg-shaped cell (‘anda’ means egg in India’s putative national language) i...

Book Review “ Death ends life, not a relationship ,” as Mitch Albom put it. That is why, we have so many rituals associated with death. Minakshi Dewan’s book, The Final Farewell [HarperCollins, 2023], is a well-researched book about those rituals. The book starts with an elaborate description of the Sikh rituals associated with death and cremation, before moving on to Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and finally Hinduism. After that, it’s all about the various traditions and related details of Hindu final rites. A few chapters are dedicated to the problems of widows in India, gender discrimination in the last rites, and the problem of unclaimed dead bodies. There is a chapter titled ‘Grieving Widows in Hindi Cinema’ too. Death and its rituals form an unusual theme for a book. Frankly, I don’t find the topic stimulating in any way. Obviously, I didn’t buy this book. It came to me as quite many other books do – for reasons of their own. I read the book finally, having shelv...

Book Review Title: From Manjunath to Manjamma Authors: B Manjamma Jogathi with Harsha Bhat Publisher: HarperCollins India, 2023 Pages: 171 I had an aversion towards the transgender people I met on the trains during my frequent travels as a younger man. These people came across as rude and vulgar. They would enter the train compartment in a large group, clapping hands loudly, waking up sleeping passengers and insisting on being given generous alms. They would go to the extent of hectoring the passengers, even making physical intrusions like poking and caressing body parts that we won’t let strangers touch. Reading Arundhati Roy’s novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness , a few years ago, made me look at transpersons with some empathy. Anjum, the transperson protagonist, is also a Muslim. Double alienation. Anjum is an undesirable citizen of the country by virtue of being a transperson who is also a Muslim. She is pushed out of the mainstream literally and driven to living i...