Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Book Review Title: Gods, Guns and Missionaries: The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity Author: Manu S Pillai Publisher: Penguin Random House India, 2024 Pages: 564 (about half of which consists of Notes) There never was any monolithic religion called Hinduism. Different parts of India practised Hinduism in its own ways, with its own gods and rituals and festivals. Some of these were even mutually opposed. For example, Vamana who is a revered incarnation of Vishnu in North India becomes a villain in Kerala’s Onam legends. What has become of this protean religion of infinite variety and diversity today in the hands of its ‘missionary’ political leaders? Manu S Pillai’s book ends with V D Savarkar’s contributions to the religion with a subtle hint that it is his legacy that is driving the present version of the religion in the name of Hindutva. The last lines of the book, leaving aside the Epilogue titled ‘What is Hinduism?’, are telltale. “Life did not give Savarkar all he...

Book Review Title: The Vegetarian Author: Han Kang Translator: Deborah Smith [from Korean] Publisher: Granta, London, 2018 Pages: 183 Insanity can provide infinite opportunities to a novelist. The protagonist of Nobel laureate Han Kang’s Booker-winner novel, The Vegetarian , thinks of herself as a tree. One can argue with ample logic and conviction that trees are far better than humans. “Trees are like brothers and sisters,” Yeong-hye, the protagonist, says. She identifies herself with the trees and turns vegetarian one day. Worse, she gives up all food eventually. Of course, she ends up in a mental hospital. The Vegetarian tells Yeong-hye’s tragic story on the surface. Below that surface, it raises too many questions that leave us pondering deeply. What does it mean to be human? Must humanity always entail violence? Is madness a form of truth, a more profound truth than sanity’s wisdom? In the disturbing world of this novel, trees represent peace, stillness, and nonviol...

Book Review Title: Lapbah: Stories from the North-East (2 volumes) Editors: Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih & Rimi Nath Publisher: Penguin Random House India 2025 Pages: 366 + 358   Nestled among the eastern Himalayas and some breathtakingly charming valleys, the Northeastern region of India is home to hundreds of indigenous communities, each with distinct traditions, attire, music, and festivals. Languages spoken range from Tibeto-Burman and Austroasiatic tongues to Indo-Aryan dialects, reflecting centuries of migration and interaction. Tribal matrilineal societies thrive in Meghalaya, while Nagaland and Mizoram showcase rich Christian tribal traditions. Manipur is famed for classical dance and martial arts, and Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh add further layers of ethnic plurality and ecological richness. Sikkim blends Buddhist heritage with mountainous serenity, and Assam is known for its tea gardens and vibrant Vaishnavite culture. Collectively, the Northeast is a uni...

Book Review    Title: Heart Lamp: Selected Stories Author: Banu Mushtaq Translator: Deepa Bhasthi Publisher: Penguin Books, 2025 Pages: 216   The short stories in this slim volume that won the International Booker Prize 2025 present the voice of the voiceless women among the Muslims of Karnataka. The essential beauty of these stories lies in the way the inner rage of the women-characters is presented: quietly. The rage never becomes a blazing flame; it remains there within the character as a fraught flicker – as a yearning in some stories, helplessness in some others, and painful empathy in a few. Gender and patriarchy in conservative Muslim families, the tensions between restrictive tradition and personal freedom, and the complex emotional landscapes of women who are caught in a socio-religious system that may horrify people who are not acquainted with it – these are the themes in general. Every single character in these twelve stories is as real as t...

Book Review Title: The Lucky Ones: A Memoir Author: Zara Chowdhary Publisher: Context – Westland Books, 2024 Pages: 309 At the beginning of Julian Barnes’s novel, The Sense of an Ending , history is described by a young student as “the lies of the victors.” His teacher reminds him that it could also be “the self-delusions of the defeated.” Later, as the young student grows up into a mature adult and sees more of life, he learns that history is “more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious nor defeated.” Zara Chowdhary is a survivor – neither victor nor defeated – of the 2002 anti-Muslim Gujarat riots which she calls “genocide” many times in her book. She was a 16-year-old girl just about to complete her school when she and many others like her got trapped in the little worlds of their houses as murderous mobs went around entering the houses of Muslims, killing the men and raping the women, and perpetrating some most inhuman deeds such as ripping...

Book Review   Title: Descent Into Paradise Author: Daniel Bosley Publisher: Macmillan, 2023 Pages: 410   Sometime in 2001-2002, when I was new to Delhi’s pretentiousness, I applied for a teaching post in the Maldives. Now I realise that my destiny [which Maggie calls Providence] was good enough that my application was rejected. I would have been a dead man on one of the thousand plus islands and atolls of the country within a year of my arrival there. This is one of the many sad lessons I learn from Daneil Bosley’s book on the island nation. The author arrived in the Maldives as a journalist, unable to find a better job than a postman’s in his own country, the UK. From 2011, Bosley worked in the Maldives for seven years and married a young woman from there too, having converted to Islam just for the wedding. His book comes from firsthand information and impressions about the country’s history, politics, and, above all, religion. And a doom that awaits the cou...

Book Review Title: The Journey of the Soul Author: Dhanya Ramachandran Publisher: Sahitya Publications, Kozhikode, 2025 Pages: 64 “I n the whispers of the wind, I hear a gentle voice.” Dhanya Ramachandran’s poems are generally gentle voices like the whispers of the wind. The above line is from the poem ‘Seek’. There is some quest in most of the poems. As the title of the anthology suggests, most of the poems are inward journeys of the poet, searching for something or offering consolations to the self. Darkness and shadows come and go, especially in the initial poems, like a motif. “In the darkness, shadows dance and play.” That’s how ‘Echoes of Agony’ begins. There are haunting memories, regrets, and sorrow in that poem. And a longing for solace. “Tears dry, but scars remain.” Shadows are genial too occasionally. “Shadows sway to the wind’s soft sigh / As we stroll hand in hand beneath the sky…” (‘Moonlit Serenade’) The serenity of love is rare, however, in the collecti...

Book Review Title : Little Things, Big Things Author: Swarnali Nath To live life as a perpetual celebration is not easy, especially since we live in a highly troubled world. There are all sorts of violence all around: personal, social, political, religious, and national. How do we celebrate life in spite of all that? Swarnali Nath’s self-help book is a rich guide which contains various concepts of happiness collected from diverse regions and cultures. Every chapter of this, without exception, has an exotic title like Omoiyari and Livsnjutare . They are all words taken from languages like Japanese or Norwegian. Each one of them refers to a particular way of understanding happiness, a particular key to happiness. Swarnali [I’m referring to her by her first name because of our familiarity with each other through blogging] has done much research before writing this book, as evidenced by the elaborate bibliography and references at the end. I had read a part of this book earlier ...

Jayasree Kalathil, Sandhya Mary, and the book Book Review Title: Maria, Just Maria Author: Sandhya Mary Translator: Jayasree Kalathil T his is a crazy novel. It is hard to find a normal human being in it. There is more than one place in the narrative where we are told that every human being is insane to some degree. I won’t disagree with that. However, there are certain standards or wavelengths which are generally considered to be ‘normal’ if not sane and it is that normalcy which keeps the world going. Sandhya Mary’s debut novel flings a huge question mark on that normalcy. As I was reading this novel, I was constantly reminded of a joke that Albert Camus narrates in his brilliant essay on the meaning of life, The Myth of Sisyphus . A madman is sitting by a swimming pool with a fishing rod in hand. Seeing his serenity, his psychiatrist [I think in Camus’s own version it’s just a passerby – but I find the psychiatrist more appropriate] asks him whether he has caught any fish....

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...