Tomichan Matheikal's blog

I stood face to face with Ruskin Bond. He had his characteristic genial smile on his face. My face must have revealed a helpless inhibition which held me back from going to him and the simultaneous desire to go to him and say a Hi at least. I would have loved to have a conversation with him, however brief. That was in 2003. I had taken a student of mine from school for an award ceremony organised by ITC at the ITC Hotel in Mumbai. My student was one of the 15 prize-winners of a short story competition conducted by ITC and their newly launched brand of student-oriented products named Classmate . The awards were being presented by Ruskin Bond who would also release the story anthology. My student who won the award was a fan of Ruskin Bond. But he did not seem the least interested in meeting his favourite writer personally and getting an autograph. He was with the other prize-winners who were all imprinting autographs on one another’s white T-shirts presented to them by ITC and whic...

I visited two unlikely places yesterday along with a friend whom I shall refer to as J. A cousin of J’s was an inmate of a sanatorium meant for men who were shifted from a mental hospital. This cousin had undergone treatment for years at the hospital. Now for the last few years, he is in the sanatorium and he looks perfectly normal. He talks like any other normal person too though years of psychiatric treatment has given him a conspicuous stoop. He seems to find it hard to look up into your eyes as he speaks due to the stoop. But he does smile a lot. There was an occasional laughter too, subdued though it was. “Have you retired?” He asked me. When I answered, his instant remark was, “Your grey hairs gave me the hint.” I had the same grey hairs when I met him two years ago along with J and I was teaching then. He had probably not noticed it that time. But he remembered me and also the fact that I was a teacher though the visit was very brief. “My hairs are grey too,” he added wi...

Pic from Pixabay In psychologist Erik Erikson’s theory, a sense of fulfilment is the sign of a happy old age. As one moves into the latter half of his/her sixties, if one feels contented with one’s own life so far, the old age is going to be ‘cool’. Otherwise, discontentment or even despair is one’s lot in the last years of life. Very few may achieve a sense of complete satisfaction with their own life towards the end. When we look back, there may be causes for regrets. I am a sexagenarian myself racing to the final stage of life as listed by Erikson. When I look back, I can see blunders after blunders committed by me in my youth as well as my adulthood. My growing into maturity was a slow and tedious process. Painful too, quite often. But am I going to sit down and feel regrets? No. “Regret is a temptation,” says Joan Chittister, author of The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully . Regret, she goes on to say, “entices us to lust for what never was in the past rather than to b...

I can hear "Time's winged chariot hurrying near" more clearly and seriously than  Andrew Marvell . People younger than me are bidding the final farewell in my neighbourhood in the post-Covid days. As a young man I used to yearn for death quite often. That longing was more than the Freudian psychological condition known as Thanatos. It was a profound acknowledgement of my own sense of worthlessness as a being. Mediocrity, if not worthlessness. Delhi soothed my Thanatos, however. When you live in a residential school along with all others associated with the school, you stop feeling utterly worthless. There’s something you are good at, you suddenly realise. It may be as simple as identifying the goodness in the other person with whom you share the dining table or the department duties. You can’t live with other people 24x7 unless you learn to see something good wherever you look. And when you see something good all around, Thanatos takes flight. Thanatos has returned...