Tomichan Matheikal's blog

All images AI-generated When Gukesh Dommaraju became the Chess Grandmaster at the age of 18, I was reminded of my personal passion for the game as a young boy. I learnt the game when I was ten years or so and I was so passionate about it that I picked up a book by none less than Bobby Fischer, the most famous chess champion of the time, to learn master strategies. I lacked the commitment of Gukesh, however, and hence didn’t become any champion. But I loved playing the game in those days. I loved the strategic moves it demands. The game is like life in many ways. I failed to learn the strategies of a successful life, however. That’s a different matter. You can be a loser in practical life in spite of knowing a lot of theoretic strategies. As we are moving on to a New Year , I am tempted to make a comparison between chess and life, though I failed to convert the theories to practice. Never mind my personal failures. My life has reached its autumn, and so my successes and failures are...

One of the best novels ever written is Dostoevsky’s Karamazov Brothers [also translated as The Brothers Karamazov ]. Alyosha, Ivan and Dmitri are the three brothers of the title. Each one of them presents a particular way of looking at life, a unique personality. Alyosha is a personification of goodness, Ivan is a man of the intellect, and Dmitri is all passions. The narrator of the novel tells us that the hero is Alyosha whose story the book really is. But all the three brothers play more or less equal roles and each one of them catches our attention with a vice-like grip. Ivan is the one who has captured my attention right from the first time I read the novel decades ago. Dostoevsky wouldn’t endorse my admiration for Ivan, of course. Alyosha is Dostoevsky’s ideal human being. He is a 20-year-old handsome person who is a living saint. He is training to be a monk in a monastery. His religious faith is deep and mature. His love for mankind arises from a profound understanding of h...

When I was reading an article in Malayalam by Rekha K [ Bhashaposhini annual edition 2023], the question that lingered in my mind from beginning to the end of my reading was: How many people born in our world were actually wanted as children by their parents ? Rekha says that her birth was an unwanted accident. She was conceived when her mother was 42 and father 59. Her parents had six children already and they were studying in colleges or high schools. Rekha was not expected. Rekha just happened. A freak birth. Her siblings were not quite chuffed with the new arrival. They were teased by friends with questions like whether their parents had no idea about birth control methods. The aged parents too thought it was quite preposterous to have yet another baby at their age and so they decided to abort the foetus. But the abortion went awry! Some are fated to be born no matter what others do! The writer goes on to say that her parents gave her a bombastic name anyway. Maybe to make a...

Romeo and Juliet [ PNGwing ] In Shakespeare’s notable romantic tragedy, Juliet hurls the question: “Wherefore art thou Romeo?” The meaning is ‘Why are you Romeo?’ Those who are familiar with the play will understand what Juliet meant. If Romeo’s name was different, their love would have met with no resistance. Romeo was the son and heir of the Montague family while Juliet was a Capulet. There is a violent feud going on between the two families and hence the love between Romeo and Juliet is not welcome. Juliet’s question, in fact, is: ‘Why are you a Montague?’ ‘What’s in a name?’ A few moments later in the play, Juliet who has not turned 14 yet, will ask. That little girl who is yet to understand that there is much to a name will end up stabbing herself in the heart for the sake of love. Wherefore art thou, Juliet? I am left thinking. I turned 63 the other day. [Hitler and I share the same birthday!] Half a century older than Juliet, I ask myself: Wherefore art thou, Tomichan? ...

There are some books which are unputdownable, yet they compel you to put them down in order to contemplate.  Every page is a bewitching invitation to turn over to the next.  Every line captures your fancy and you don’t want to leave the intoxication.  Yet your mind urges you to stop and take in a line here or a metaphor there more deeply.  One of the many books which did that to me (and will do it again when I read it again) is Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis. There is very little by way of plot in this novel.  There is the first person narrator who would rather choose a book on love than a beautiful woman who offers the experience of love to him.  Then there’s Zorba, the protagonist, who is a sixty year-old man with boundless passion for life.  He thinks that a woman sleeping alone is “a shame on all men.”  The intensity of Zorba’s passion for life can seduce women, notwithstanding his age.  He is a lover, fighter, adventurer, ...

There are two teachers who have left indelible marks in my psyche.  They are not my teachers in any traditional sense of the term.  They came occupying certain eminent positions in the school where I taught for well over a decade.  That school had been taken over by a new management, a religious cult, and these two ladies belonged to the cult. Together they taught me some of the greatest lessons of life which nobody else could have taught.  One of them, an elderly lady with a beatific smile on her attenuated  lips, tried to teach me English as soon as she took charge as the manager of the school.  She began editing a report I had written for the annual sports day of the school.  Every now and then she looked at me contemptuously, without losing her beatific smile, as she massacred my report and gave it quite a shape that I couldn’t ever have.  My education under her began that day and the lessons she taught me will stand me in good stead...

One of the first roses that bloomed in my little garden The following poem was inspired by it.  Why do you look so penitent like Tagore’s flowe r that asked the master to pluck it without delay lest it droop and drop into dust? Aren’t we all made for the dust? You leave me wondering, however, whether it’s the same master that created the night’s worm which seeks out your bed of crimson joy . Isn’t the worm made for the dust too?

It is when I actually constructed a house for myself that I learnt how I could have made a better house at less cost.  It is when I reach the autumn of life that I learn how richer life would have been had I made different choices.  But neither can be undone.  The construction of a house is a one-time accomplishment.  At least, one’s life is a one-time affair.  There’s no going back. Life is a cruel game of the gods if they exist.  Christopher McDougall’s gazelle and lion that wake up every morning in an African forest and start running for survival are poignant symbols of that cruel game.  The graceful gazelle has to run in order to save its life from the feral lion.  And the lion has to run and capture the gazelle for its own survival.  The conqueror and the vanquished keep running in the wicked game of life.  Could I have chosen to stand out of that game and watch?  Even that wouldn’t save me because I wouldn’...

Book Review Memories play a vital role in human life.  It is also necessary to forget many things because some memories may be a painful burden.  Kazuo Ishiguro’s latest novel, The Buried Giant , is about memories. Axl and Beatrice, an elderly couple, set out in search of their son.  They don’t remember why their son left them.  In fact, their memories about many things are vague.  It is because of a magic that King Arthur’s beloved magician, Merlin, had performed in order to bring peace among the Britons and the Saxons. The novel is set in those days when the Romans had left Britannia and the Saxons came in to take their place.  King Arthur is no more but his nephew, Sir Gawain, is alive though very old.  Axl and Beatrice will encounter Sir Gawain on their way.  Two other persons who join them are Wistan and Edwin.  Wistan is a Saxon warrior who hates Britons.  His mission is to kill the dragon Querig who is as wise as...

One of the best poems about Christmas that I’ve read is T. S. Eliot’s Journey of the Magi .  My short story, The First Christmas , was largely inspired by this poem. “The world went on with its usual activities of finding food, conquering lands, vanquishing other people, mating and reproducing, killing and plundering, building and destroying.”  The narrator of the story, one of the three magi, says that.  Caspar, the narrator, was on a quest because he could find no meaning in a life that revolved around eating, conquering, mating, and so on.  “If human life is the progress from being a bold, free and above all creative child to cowardice, dependence and creativity that ends in procreation in a span of about 60 or 70 years and then succumbing to death as a child in the garb of an old creature, then, my beloved, I have nothing to be proud of being born a man.”  Thus says the narrator of a Malayalam novel ( Manushyanu Oru Amukham -  A Preface to ...

Mat wanted to die because he thought life was too frivolous an affair to deserve itself.  He had already consulted many experts on the matter before he ran into me. The doc whom he approached for medical assistance bluntly refused.  “You want me to spend the rest of my life in prison?” asked the doc furiously.   “What prevented the doc from giving me the injection was fear of the prison,” Mat explained to me.  "Not any love of life." “If the law did not prevent suicide, would you have helped me?” Mat asked the doc.  “If I try to commit suicide and fail, will the law be punishing me for failing to live or for failing to die?” The doc stared blankly into Mat’s eyes.  Then the blankness became fury.  “Get out,” he said. Then Mat went to his pastor.  “Nowhere in the Bible is it said that suicide is a sin,” explained Mat to the pastor.  And the pastor thought Mat was right.  The Old Testament’s Yahweh was very fond of ...

It is a blessing to be able to smile after you have crossed over into that period of life which people would rather refer to with the help of some euphemism than plainly as ‘old age.’  When friends of the same age group counsel you condescendingly that “age is a matter of the mind,” you are free to smile.  Smile at the condescension.  Or you can smile at the hypocrisy.  Or self-delusion, if you wish to look at it that way.  You are free to smile when people choose to call it positive thinking.  And you can smile all the way as you drive to some Art of Living prayer session which will teach you avant-garde terminology for the senility that inevitably catches up with you. The realisation that life is all the sound and fury that transpires between the wail that marks your arrival on the scene and the gasp that pushes you out can be an ideal source of smile.  The lessons that your near and dear ones tried to teach you in the countless scenes of the...

If there were an undo button in life, what would I undo?  This is the question raised by Anjana at Indiblogger this week. Wishing to undo something is a sign of regret.  There are many things in my life that I have reasons to regret. But I choose not to regret.  I go with Don Juan, the “Man of Knowledge” in Carlos Castaneda’s many inspiring books, who advised us not to regret but make decisions.  Regrets don’t achieve anything.  To err is human.  To forgive or not to forgive is also human.  Forgetting certain errors makes life easier.  Learning from certain errors makes us wiser.  Undoing errors is only wishful thinking.  There is no undo button in life. Could I undo my birth?  The ultimate absurdity of human endeavours would have made me wish that.  But I don’t want to be a Hamlet oscillating between a harsh reality and an undesirable alternative.  Nor am I pining for the Buddhist nirvana since nirvana is th...

Aruna Ramachandra Shanbaug passed away this morning.  She lived 42 years in a bed of King Edward Memorial Hospital, Mumbai.  A brutal rape had rendered her comatose.  The rapist spent seven years in the prison and became a free man.  His victim lived in a vegetative state as a question mark on many things. The most controversial question her life raised was about the limits and possibilities of euthanasia when Pinki Virani, writer and human rights activist, moved the Supreme Court seeking euthanasia for Aruna in 2011.  Can anyone choose another person’s death however absurd that person’s life may be?  This was the question that the apex court was faced with.  Obviously, the court decided against Virani’s choice.  Yet can we blame Virani for what she did?  She was being compassionate to Aruna.  Compassion and justice need not always be on the same side of morality.  That was one of the paradoxes raised by Aruna’s life. Ar...

Fiction A few years ago, I was holidaying in Kerala.  One of the many journeys found me reaching the sleepy little town nearest to my home late in the night.  The last bus to the village had left three hours ago.  A couple of auto-rickshaws waited languidly for weary passengers.  I was not weary and I decided to walk.  The few drinks I had just had along with a light dinner roused up the romantic spirit in me.  I thought of the winding village road lined with a variety of trees on both the sides.  The sound of cicadas kept me company as soon as I left behind the lights of the town.  There were very few street lights.  Fireflies danced mirthfully teasing me.  The moon shone brightly in the sky and the beams filtered through the leaves of the trees casting weird patterns on the road.  Occasionally a dog barked from some veranda and then went to sleep again.  The village cemetery lay a few hundred metres from my home...