Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Melancholy lies like a deep ocean In the nebulous gaze of your eyes. No grand waves, only bland ripples, Constantly moving like an eternal dancer, Graceful, gentle, seductive, And intimidating at once. I have sailed in that ocean On a raft floating on the ripples. I longed to plumb the depths, But the fathomlessness withheld me. I wish I had the recklessness To dive into the briny deeps. The last time we met I saw myself lying on the waters Like a phantasmagoric shadow.

4 March 1966.   John Lennon, the legendary singer, achieved a fame that he did not savour.   The London Evening Standard reported that day a remark of Lennon’s: “Christianity will go.   It will vanish and shrink…. We’re more popular than Jesus now.”   An American magazine for the young people picked up that remark and condensed it into a headline: “We’re more popular than Jesus.” John Lennon claimed to be bigger than Jesus.   The news spread like wildfire and the Americans went into a frenzy.   Some fanatics declared Lennon a blasphemer and vowed “eternal’ ban on all Beatles music, past, present and future. People were appointed at 14 pickup points to collect Beatle records and anything associated with the music troupe.   The records were burnt. “I’m not anti-God, anti-Christ or anti-religion,” Lennon explained in what was projected as an apology.   “I was not saying we are greater or better. I believe in God, but not as one thing,...

A few of my students One of the best things I love about my profession, teaching, is the abundance of smiles in my life.   From the time I enter the campus in the morning till I leave in the evening, I receive hundreds of innocent smiles.   The very sight of students brings smiles to my lips and they are always reciprocated.   The world is beautiful when people smile. The adult world is different.   I have noticed that adults rarely reciprocate smiles.   Probably they have their own pains and worries which suppress the smiles even if they might want to smile.   I too have my pains and worries.   But I choose to smile simply because I know that the smiles bring me joy. Once when a student ceased to smile at me because I gave her less marks in a test than she thought she deserved, I felt hurt.   It took me three days and pretty much explanation to put the smile back on her lips.   But the efforts were worth.   A smile mean...

One of my Holi memories from Delhi Holi passed without holiday, without colours, without pollution. My relief knows no bounds.   Holi is one of the festivals I dreaded when I lived in Delhi. It meant breathlessness after people leave you having dumped as much filth on your body as possible.   The other was Diwali.   It meant dumping filth into the air.   Again, I was left breathless.   Asthalin inhaler and Otrivin nasal drops saved me on both occasions. I would have loved to enjoy both the festivals from a safe distance.   If people want to throw whatever they want on other people and call it festivals, it is their business.   Who am I to question that?   But the problem is that they insisted on throwing at least some of that on me.   Even if I sat at home with my door bolted they would come ringing the bell.   “I am allergic,” I would plead.   “Only a little bit,” they would claim.   Everyone throws a little b...

If you are a cynic, you find life amusing most of the time.   Cynics have the unique knack for looking around for a coffin when they smell flowers.   I live in Kerala where cynicism is cultivated as a highly sophisticated form of art.   At dinner time the Malayalam news channels will bring you, without exception, the most cynical commentaries on the day’s events.   Kerala has probably the highest number of trolls on the various social media.   It is good that people like Narendra Modi and Amit Shah do not know Malayalam; otherwise the cynical TV programmes and the media trolls would have given them multiple sclerosis long ago.   Grihalakshmi Cover The latest target of such cynicism in Kerala is a Malayalam magazine, Grihalakshmi , which gave the photo of a breastfeeding woman on its cover with the caption: Mothers tell Kerala: Don’t stare, we want to breastfeed (our babies). The woman in the picture is Gilu Joseph, who is a model, writer, acto...