Tomichan Matheikal's blog

If you want to have a typical nonvegetarian Malayali lunch or dinner in a serene village in Kerala, here is the Garden of Eden all set for you at Ramapuram [literally ‘Abode of Rama’] in central Kerala. The place has a temple each for Rama and his three brothers: Lakshmana, Bharata, and Shatrughna. It is believed that Rama meditated in this place during his exile and also that his brothers joined him for a while. Right in the heart of the small town is a Catholic church which is an imposing structure that makes an eloquent assertion of religious identity. Quite close to all these religious places is the Garden of Eden, Eden Thoppu in Malayalam, a toddy shop with a difference. Toddy is palm wine, a mild alcoholic drink collected from palm trees. In my childhood, toddy was really natural; i.e., collected from palm trees including coconut trees which are ubiquitous in Kerala. My next-door neighbours, two brothers who lived in the same house, were toddy-tappers. Toddy was a health...

When a cousin of mine posted the following video on a WhatsApp group, my first impulse was to locate the Punjabi restaurant presented in it, merely because I love Punjabi cuisine. One of the foods I missed in the last ten years – that is, after Maggie and I left Delhi – is tandoori roti with chicken tikka masala. My first association with Punjabi food – if that can be called so – is the Patiala peg that I was served when I was in Shillong. A friend who wanted to see me inebriated too quickly for his own reasons told me that he was going to pour me a Patiala peg. I was familiar with the largeness of Punjabi kurta-pyjamas. Later Maggie would teach me about the enormous size of Patiala pants for ladies, which a friend of mine nicknamed Elephant’s trousers.   When Maggie and I settled down in Delhi, we came across many Punjabi people including students, and the first thing we noticed was the largeness of their hearts. Yes, there’s something big about everything that is Punjabi, e...

Book Review    Title: Heart Lamp: Selected Stories Author: Banu Mushtaq Translator: Deepa Bhasthi Publisher: Penguin Books, 2025 Pages: 216   The short stories in this slim volume that won the International Booker Prize 2025 present the voice of the voiceless women among the Muslims of Karnataka. The essential beauty of these stories lies in the way the inner rage of the women-characters is presented: quietly. The rage never becomes a blazing flame; it remains there within the character as a fraught flicker – as a yearning in some stories, helplessness in some others, and painful empathy in a few. Gender and patriarchy in conservative Muslim families, the tensions between restrictive tradition and personal freedom, and the complex emotional landscapes of women who are caught in a socio-religious system that may horrify people who are not acquainted with it – these are the themes in general. Every single character in these twelve stories is as real as t...

I have a friend who is a jack of all trades. He can double up as a plumber or electrician or carpenter, almost anything, when required. I rely on him frequently for many of my simple domestic repairs, the latest being changing a toilet seat cover yesterday. “Keep it,” he said pointing at the old seat cover which I was going to dump among the plastic waste that will be carried away by one of the many men who come by regularly collecting such recyclable scrap materials. “What!” I exclaimed in spite of knowing his proclivity for keeping anything and everything on the basis of a simple philosophy: nothing is waste, everything becomes handy some time or other . “I mean those nuts and bolts,” he clarified. “We’ll buy new ones when required,” I retorted. Suchita Agarwal of Team Blogchatter reminded me yesterday that today is the World Environment Day. Below is Blogchatter’s suggestion for adding value to the Day.  My friend mentioned above will have a whole truckful of thing...

India's Armed Forces hunting the Maoists Recently India, particularly the media, celebrated two events: (1) the success of Operation Sindoor which was a quasi-war on Pakistan, and (2) the killing of the Maoist chief Nambala Keshava Rao and 27 of his warriors. Personally, I felt uneasy about both the celebrations. Neither of them is a victory, something within me kept whispering to me. They are both tragedies masquerading as victories in the history being fabricated by certain vested interests. The truths about the Pak affair will come to light only much later. Perhaps, they may never see the light of day. This post is going to look at the second affair. With the killing of the Maoists, especially its Supremo, Maoism in India is all set for its last rites. That is what excited the Indian media. I didn’t come across any TV channel or other significant media agency that probed the reality from the perspective of the Maoists. I hasten to add that I don’t endorse any kind of vio...