Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Book Review Iran witnessed revolutions based on communism as well as Islam.  Like all revolutions, they had their share of bloodshed and frenzy, narrow perspectives and flatulence.  Revolutions make heroes of some and victims of many others.  Opportunists fish in the troubled waters and reap rich dividends.  In the end, nothing really changes for the majority for whom one form of oppression is replaced with another. In The Book of Fate , Persian writer Parinoush Saniee tells us the story of both the revolutions that rocked Iran.  The story is narrated by Massoumeh who is a young school-going girl at the beginning of the novel.  She is 53 at the end.  The novel is essentially about her painful experiences in a country which has too many rules for women.  Girls are meant only for procreation and education is not required for that.  Girls should not reveal their teeth while laughing, nor can they laugh loud.  They are not even allowed an identity: their face has to be conce

John Keats admired beauty.  Otherwise he could not have written the poem ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’.  The poem narrates the story of a knight in the middle ages who met a beautiful woman in some wilderness.  She, the beauty, allowed him to take her on his horseback to some places as he wished until finally she took him to her cave and lulled him to sleep.  When the knight woke up, the beauty had disappeared.  He went in search of that beauty all over the valley. Keats’ poem ends with the statement that the knight is still searching for the beautiful woman in that valley years and years after she deserted him.  You would think he was a ghost in case you met him there in that valley.  Seekers of beauty became ghosts in Keats’ era (early 19th century) But Keats belonged to an era when people, at least some people, quested after truth which they thought was beauty.  “Beauty is truth and truth beauty.”  Didn’t Keats write that too?  And you don’t need to know anything more than

A Red Road is cutting through the green globe. Have you seen it in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Algeria, Baharain...?