Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Introductory Note:   The following short play was written by me for the Annual Day of my school.  It has been staged today, the Annual Day, whose theme was PARIVARTAN.  The Cast King Chatterjee - Minister Mrs Pandey - Minister Patel - Minister Sharma - Minister Patnaik - Leader of Opposition Nath - Opposition Member Mrs Nanda - Opposition Member Beggar Soldier 1 Soldier 2 A view from the play The King’s Palace.  There’s a throne in the centre.  Chairs on sides.  When the curtain rises all the ministers and opposition are standing on the stage talking among themselves softly. Drum beat.  Bugle call. Silence on the stage.  All stand at attention. Soldier 1: (from side) Attention, attention!  The Great King, the Champion of champions, the Warrior of warriors, the Conqueror of the world, the Eliminator of enemies, his Excellency, the Mighty Shatrughna Vikram Singh Bahadur is on his royal waaaaay. ...

Those who live by the book will die by the book’s folly. “After all, as a book man, I should judge a book for its literary merit, irrespective of its subject matter.  Poppycock.” The above quote is from Vikram Kapur’s article in today’s [4 Nov] Hindu Literary Review .  I would have certainly expected more sense from The Hindu editors than this poppycock from Mr Kapur who claims to be “a book man” but depends more on Google than books. Mr Kapur’s article is poppycock par excellence.  He says Hilary Mantel did not deserve the Man Booker Prize for her first novel, Wolf Hall , merely for: 1.       Thomas Cromwell’s name had to be searched by Kapur on Google. 2.       Henry VIII married 6 times. 3.       Thomas Cromwell did not have the temerity to murder Henry VIII unlike Oliver Cromwell who did possess that temerity to kill his monarch and hence is familiar to Kapur. 4. ...

I am very wary of people who are religious by profession.  My experience is that they are more eager to receive than give.  They look for donations, offerings, and other means of accumulating wealth without doing any creative or productive work.  So it did not come as a surprise to me when a friend of mine narrated his experience. His school was taken over recently from a Trust by a religious cult.  One of the first things the cultists did was to curtail the rights and privileges of the staff.  Given below is an extract from a letter issued by them to some of the staff members, most of whom have been working in the institution for about ten years. Name of school and designation of staff blacked out The Trust which was running the school formerly was paying the staff according to recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission, though a few allowances were not given due to financial constraints.  Had it not been for the financial constraints,...

Dussehra was celebrated all over the country yesterday in various ways in tune with regional beliefs.   Today’s [25 Oct] Times of India carries a few interesting headlines in relation to the celebrations. “Filth, stench mar Durga idol immersion,” says one such headline.   “Puja material adds to Yamuna’s woes,” laments another. The devotees of Durga were not aware of the Delhi government’s order that the idols should be immersed only in certain places allotted specifically for the purpose.   Consequently people disposed of the idols wherever they liked.   Along with the idols was also disposed a lot of waste matter including plastic wrappers of food items and empty mineral water bottles.   The much polluted Yamuna was ill fated to carry more pollution than it could ever digest. A question that should necessarily arise in our minds is: why can’t we modernize certain rituals that have become out of tune with the time?   Doesn’t religion require modern...

The novel that I started reading yesterday and keeps my attention riveted is Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Dream of the Celt (2012).   Llosa won the Nobel Prize for Literature two years ago.   The reason why I bought this novel of his is not that, however.   The novel is about Roger Casement, a controversial hero of Irish nationalism.   My reason for buying the novel was not that either.   I ordered for the book when I read in a review that the novel was about the barbarism perpetrated by the European colonists in the Congo.   Llosa’s protagonist was an Irishman who went to the Congo with the noble desire to “civilize” the people there.   A few pages into the novel, I am quite delighted to come across Joseph Conrad as a character.   Conrad was a sailor and he met Roger in the Congo.   In Llosa’s novel, Conrad tells Roger that the latter “should have appeared as co-author” of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness . In Heart of Darkness , a charac...