Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Joy drowned in the stinking filth generated by the city day after day. It happened in the city of Thiruvananthapuram, capital of Kerala, two days back. Joy, a young sanitation worker, dared to plunge into the Amayizhanchan canal - a 5.40 km-long canal originating in the heart of the city and ending at Akkulam Lake – in order to clean it. The filthy water gained a current due to the heavy rain and dragged him along into a tunnel where he died. His dead body was recovered after two days of frantic search by a group of scuba divers and a six-member Navy team. Joy is just one of the many, many victims created by the waste we throw around. The Amayizhanchan canal had become nothing more than a revolting drain just like many other canals and rivers in the country. Clogged with plastic and other waste materials people dump senselessly. I remember the great deluge of 2018 in Kerala. The river that runs through my village was inundated. The water level rose intimidatingly moment by moment...

Colours in the making When the monsoon landed in Kerala towards the end of May, the meteorological department predicted excess rains this season. The reality, as usual, cocked a snook at the forecast. It rained cats and dogs for a few days, probably because of certain disturbances in the oceans, and then the sun lashed the state mercilessly. I put trust in the forecast and bought quite a few flower pots to add colours to my close surroundings. I’m not giving up anyway even if the rains ditch me. If I have bought the pots, I will also make sure that plants grow in them. May not be flowers. Even the nursery staff tell me that it is difficult to grow flower plants given the nature’s unpredictable behaviour. So I have collected leafy plants with all possible colours. When they all grow up, I will have all the colours I wanted around my house.  We, in Kerala, are better off than our counterparts in North India where the temperature is well above 40 degrees Celsius in many places inc...

Fiction It was years since I had left Kochi.  Sitting on the shore of the Vembanad backwaters sipping beer with an old classmate, I remembered those days of my life as a college student.  Professor Leela Menon wafted into our conversation as naturally as the breeze from the lake set the coconut leaves nodding gently.  “She retired more than ten years back,” said Mohan.  “She now lives all alone in a villa facing the Vembanad.” I decided to visit her.  I was one of her favourite students.  I adored her poems as well as her lectures on literature.  I participated in every essay competition to which the college was invited; I participated more to please her than anything else.  Professor Leela Menon was a poet and a social activist.  She did not marry; her life was dedicated to social causes.  She was bitterly opposed to the kind of development and that was overtaking the city.  She hated people cutting down trees in orde...

Yellowing vs Greening Winter gives way to summer in Delhi without an intervening spring.  That's, perhaps, why Nirad C Choudhuri wrote in  The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian   that life in the Indo-Gangetic plains saps vitality.  I took the following pictures this morning, vital Sunday for me, from my surroundings.  The changes in the environment in Delhi always fascinate me: they are as quick (pun intended) as the denizens of the place.  Does the environment affect people's character? Fresh vs Stale Vitality strives I count myself fortunate to be living in such surroundings.  But I also know that surroundings are not always one's choice.  They may be a gift, an evanescent gift.