Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Colonial soldiers, what have they been doing to my poetry all these years when I could have easily killed them in my poems as they’ve killed my family outside poetry? Palestinian poet Ahlam Bsharat wrote the above lines in 2021 in a poem titled ‘ How I Kill Soldiers ’. Poetry in a heartless world may pretend to be heartless too like in these lines. The poet wants to kill just like the soldiers. But poets cannot kill – that’s the fact. They have a heart. Poetry is as much about the heart as war is about armaments and attacks. As much as science is about the brain. Plato wanted to banish poets from his Republic because the philosopher didn’t think poetic passions would do any good to the nation. William Wordsworth told us that poetry is the distil of our refined emotions. T S Eliot, however, brought his sophisticated brain into poetry. We live in a dark world. Dark and evil. Poets are some of the people who bring some light, though feeble and flickering, to that dark ...

A former student of mine who is a diehard supporter of the BJP and its radicalism wrote on Facebook: “So some of the political parties in my country has (sic) a stern view that 'Astrology' is no science.”  I don’t know if the political parties in India have really stern views about anything, let alone astrology.  Isn’t politics, particularly the kind one finds in India, all about opportunism?  Even the BJP, my student’s own party, would have made all kinds of flip-flops had it not won the absolute majority in the Lok Sabha elections, hugging strange bedfellows and cooking up a bizarre coalition.  The drama that unfolded in Maharashtra after the Assembly elections is a mild indicator of the nature of politics in India. The stars in the heavens do not alter their positions a bit while such dramas unfold all over the world.  Do the stars affect our lives in any significant way?  When the Earl of Kent said in Shakespeare’s King Lear , “It’s the star...

O what nags you, dude with a smart phone, Alone and palely loitering? Like the sigh of a little dream That had no birds singing. O what nags you, dude with a smart phone, So haggard and so woe-begone? The squirrel’s granary is full, Though harvest will never be done. I see a dying lily on your brow, With anguish moist and fever-dew, And on your cheeks a fading flower Much in need of a beauty parlour. I met a lady in the mela, Full wise – a Deva’s chela, Her words sweet, her smile drugged, And her eyes were wild. I bought her lollipop, And cotton candy, and Chocó dandy; She looked at me as she did love, And made sweet moan. She took me to her chamber cool, And there she taught and fought full throat, And there I shut my wild wild eyes With dreams in mind and doodles on smart phone.   And I dreamt and dreamt Until the heavens berserk went, And woke up to see an empty ground But for people going round and round. ...

I'm writing a poem, don't disturb, I said. Broken lines is not poem, she said. Broken dreams are, I said.