Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Susmesh Chandroth in his kitchen “Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought,” Poet Shelley told us long ago. I was reading an interview with a prominent Malayalam writer, Susmesh Chandroth, this morning when Shelley returned to my memory. Chandroth says he left Kerala because the state had too much of affluence which is not conducive for the production of good art and literature. He chose to live in Kolkata where there is the agony of existence and hence also its ecstasies. He’s right about Kerala’s affluence. The state has eradicated poverty except in some small tribal pockets. Today almost every family in Kerala has at least one person working abroad and sending dollars home making the state’s economy far better than that of most of its counterparts. You will find palatial houses in Kerala with hardly anyone living in them. People who live in some distant foreign land get mansions constructed back home though they may never intend to come and live here. There are ...

“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature,” declared Joseph Campbell, illustrious mythologist.  Myths, rituals, and prayers help in making our heartbeats match the beat of the universe.  It’s about the harmony between oneself and the world outside.  It’s about discovering the meaning of that world in  spite of its apparent harshness, absurdity, and terror.  It’s about discovering the harmony between the self and the universe. Literature has helped me much in the process of discovering that harmony.  Any good work of literature makes me probe the defences I have erected against painful truths about me as well as the world outside me.  Good literature chips away those defences.  Truth is revealed through a alchemical process.  Good literature also has the potential to heal the ruptures caused by the chipping away of the facile inner illusions and self-delusions....

George Steiner God is always present in a good work of art, literature and music.  George Steiner says that in his book, Real Presences .  That God enters our being and asks us to change ourselves.  Good literature, art and music have the power to change us.  They touch our souls, in other words.  Psychology tells us that a lot of our attitudes and behaviour are determined by our subconscious mind.  The subconscious mind is the seat of all the suppressed emotions which can take the shape of the devil at times –  when we lose our cool, for example. It is this subconscious mind that good literature touches, that good music soothes or good art cools.  The suppressed feelings undergo transformation under the influence of good art, literature or music.  That transformative power is God, in Steiner’s words. Aristotle gave it a more secular name: catharsis. The process of writing is also deeply related to the subconscious mind. ...

Book Review Reading Yashodhara Lal’s novel, Sorting Out Sid , is like watching a Bollywood comedy, especially of Priyadarshan type.  There is lot of fun and frolic in the first half and then the plot becomes more lifelike, sorting out problems created by the fun and frolic.  One difference is that in Lal’s novel, the fun and frolic runs into two-thirds of the book.  That is a major flaw in an otherwise captivating novel.  There is something Wodehousean about the novel.  The protagonist, Sid [Siddharth], may remind the reader of Bertie Wooster.  He gets into all sorts of embarrassing situations because of his immaturity, superficiality and idiosyncrasies.   We meet him in the very first chapter walking into his friend Aditi’s house, later than he should have been, and wishing her “Happy Birthday” while it is actually her little son’s birthday.   We find Sid in many such comic, sometimes bordering on the farcical, situations....

“You’re lucky to have invented a god who dances to your tunes.”   The youngest and the most beloved wife of the Prophet ridicules him thus in Salman Rushdie’s most controversial novel, Satanic Verses .  “Lies! Lies! Lies!” is the reaction of Jesus on reading Mathew’s gospel in Kazantzakis’s novel, The Last Temptation of Christ .  Matthew tries to justify the lies he has written by saying that an angel dictates what he writes.  It is divine revelation.  How can lies be divine revelation?  Toward the end of Kazantzakis’s novel Matthew tells Jesus, “How masterfully I matched your words and deeds with the prophets!  It was terribly difficult, but I managed.  I used to say to myself that in the synagogues of the future the faithful would open thick tomes bound in gold and say, ‘The lesson for today is from the holy Gospel according to Matthew!’  This thought gave me wings and I wrote.” We may never know whether that was indeed th...

Those who live by the book will die by the book’s folly. “After all, as a book man, I should judge a book for its literary merit, irrespective of its subject matter.  Poppycock.” The above quote is from Vikram Kapur’s article in today’s [4 Nov] Hindu Literary Review .  I would have certainly expected more sense from The Hindu editors than this poppycock from Mr Kapur who claims to be “a book man” but depends more on Google than books. Mr Kapur’s article is poppycock par excellence.  He says Hilary Mantel did not deserve the Man Booker Prize for her first novel, Wolf Hall , merely for: 1.       Thomas Cromwell’s name had to be searched by Kapur on Google. 2.       Henry VIII married 6 times. 3.       Thomas Cromwell did not have the temerity to murder Henry VIII unlike Oliver Cromwell who did possess that temerity to kill his monarch and hence is familiar to Kapur. 4. ...

One of the many paradoxes of human life is that many people who are overtly religious may have the vilest evils lurking beneath their overt behaviour. Such evils may never become manifest in external behaviour since they remain successfully suppressed by the religiosity of the person.   The same is true of morality.   Conversely, many people who are not overtly religious or moralistic may be much better at heart than those who display virtues in their external behaviour. Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House , depicts this paradox. Ibsen died in 1906.   The play was originally published in 1879.   It is classical enough to grip our imagination and exercise our minds even today. Helmer, the protagonist, is a morally upright person, a man of honour.   No one will accuse him of any fault.   Yet when his wife, Nora, leaves him in the end returning the wedding ring, he sinks into the chair crying “Empty!.”   It is his inner emptiness that he has to confront ...

‘Should Wizard Hit Mommy?’ is a short story by John Updike.   It’s prescribed by CBSE as a lesson for class 12 students.   CBSE’s interpretation of the lesson is as silly as any interpretation can get to.   The story is about a family.   Jack the father, Clare the mother, and Jo the daughter. Jo is just 4 years old.   Jack tells her the bedtime stories.   He also tells her stories on Saturday afternoons for her nap. One Saturday afternoon he tells her the story of Roger Skunk whose problem is his stench which keeps other animals away.   He is not able to make friends because of his stench. The wizard solves the problem by transforming the smell into the fragrance of roses. Jo is happy with the story and would have gone to sleep had it not been for Jack who was unhappy with the resolution of Roger Skunk’s problem.   How can a skunk smell like roses?   He won’t be a skunk.   His identity will be lost. So Jack continued the st...