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...

A few dozen books arrived home the other day through a special arrangement, thanks to a good friend in Delhi. What a way to begin one’s retirement! My job as teacher has another ten days to go. I chose this retirement with due respect to an old saying in Malayalam, my mother tongue: ‘Quit singing when your voice is still good.’ On the verge of completing four decades of teaching, I didn’t want to leave the profession with any sour blood in the heart. The classroom has undergone a sea change. Teaching has been a relationship for me with my students, notwithstanding my inevitable flaws and limitations as a teacher. Relationships have become rather tenuous now, quite as professional as a one-night stand. I decided to devote all my time to reading, blogging, some travels and a bit of gardening. It is then that the friend from Delhi put up a very unexpected suggestion to which I said yes because I was going to get a few dozen books free in the process whose details cannot be divulged no...

The above was the title of an opinion piece published in The Guardian on 20 Oct 2023. After Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister, India’s rank in the press freedom index sank consistently and is now about to drown altogether at 161 out of 180 countries. The case filed against Ms Roy is based on some comments she made in 2010, thirteen years ago. When anyone becomes inconvenient for Modi because they dare to speak the truth on some platform or the other, Modi’s men from such agencies as the Enforcement Directorate or Income Tax or Central Bureau of Investigation will come with the handcuff. Quite many journalists have been arrested after 2014 in India. For telling the truth. Many intellectuals have stopped writing for newspapers and other periodicals just because they don’t want to spend the rest of their life in the prison. No wonder you won’t find even bloggers giving you the truth. Bloggers in India seem to have become influencers . They are doing business instead of writing ...

The tragedy of modern human, according to Vaclav Havel, is not that we know less and less about the meaning of life but that it bothers us less and less. Perhaps we have no time for such things now. We are too busy with the business of getting on in life. When writers begin to brush aside vital issues for the sake of avoiding troubles with the authorities, a country is sure to be on a path to degeneration. What good is writing devoid of integrity? German writer Bertolt Brecht wrote a poem about the writer’s agony. The government ordered that all books with dangerous teachings should be publicly burnt. A lot of good books were dispatched forthwith to their funeral pyres. One poet who was in exile was chagrined to see that his books were not there on the list of those to be burnt. He was sad, shocked, furious and distressed. He wrote a letter to the ruler: “Burn me, burn me!... Have I not / Always spoken the truth in my books? And no / You treat me like a liar! I order you: / Burn ...

Milton's Satan as imagined by Gustave Doré Bernard Shaw said with his characteristically acerbic wit, “Those who can, do; those who cannot, teach.” Though I have written a few dozen short stories, I don’t consider myself a good story writer. And I think that others don’t think any better either. So I am one of the right persons to teach how to write stories. No, don’t take all that too seriously. I just thought of responding to the week’s Bloghop prompt: “ 3 ways you can add diversity to your stories .” After all, I’ve been a teacher all my life. So, here we go. How to add diversity to your stories? 1. Bring in some evil. I’m sure you know that Satan is the most interesting personality in Milton’s classical Paradise Lost . The all-too-good characters like God and the angels are utterly boring in that poem. Satan towers over all of them as a grand and majestic figure with his eloquence and glamour. Even Adam and Eve are most interesting when they are marked by flaws. Evil...

People have different reasons for writing.  From an expression of one’s thoughts and feelings to looking for appreciation, writing can be motivated by anything.  In most cases, the motives are mixed.  Blogging too has various motives similarly. Whatever we do as a social activity must be done with a considerable sense of responsibility since it affects the society one way or another.  Quite a lot of bloggers engage in harmless activities such as putting up simple poems or photos.  Many focus on travel, food, shopping or some such innocuous theme.  However, when it comes to dealing with political, religious, social and other such issues some caution is required. In 1992, American political scientist Francis Fukuyama predicted that human civilisation would evolve towards a conflict-free utopia founded on liberal democracy and free market capitalism.  Samuel P. Huntington, another political scientist, countered it immediately arguing that th...