Tomichan Matheikal's blog

I watched the Malayalam movie Teacher last night. It is about a young lady teacher of physical education who is raped by a group of senior students after a sports meet. The students are the state champions and the teacher’s team manages to secure the Runners-up trophy. The teacher knows that the champions’ team consists of overaged players and that is illegal. But she does not make an issue of it. The students rape her nevertheless after drugging her. Sheer selfishness, insensitivity and lack of any morality drive the students to the deed. The movie shows how the teacher brings the boys to her kind of justice since the courts of justice of this country won’t be of any help. The movie is nothing more than a revenge story with the small difference that a young and sensitive woman throws all her might against a group of younger and more strapping men. What set me reflecting is not the revenge theme but the portrayal of the young students. Have the students become as insensitive and imm...

  “Are you interested in popular science books?” He asked me as I put down Carlo Rovelli’s Reality is Not What It Seems in my lap to think about what I had just read: “… great science and great poetry are both visionary, and may even arrive at the same intuitions. Our culture is foolish to keep science and poetry separated: they are two tools to open our eyes to the complexity and beauty of the world.” That was what had caught my attention particularly. That was very much in tune with my own thinking. I took interest in science precisely for this reason. I told the fellow passenger the same. He was impressed. We were both on a train. “My name is Ananthapadmanabhan,” he said. “Pretty long, isn’t it? They call me Pappu, for short.” And he laughed. The name Pappu is in North India what Sasi is in Kerala: Dunce. “People like to compartmentalise truths,” Pappu said when I told him about my limited interest in science. “It makes life easier. Use science for practical life and re...

Barbra Streisand and her bungalow Streisand Effect is a kind of boomerang. I had no idea about this until I read an article in a Malayalam weekly this morning. The article was discussing the BBC documentary on Modi and the Indian government’s response to it. The writer of the article says that BBC should be grateful to the Modi government for all the publicity it got because of the government’s attempts to ban the documentary in India. There is nothing new in the documentary. Whatever is mentioned in its both parts together is already known to anyone who has cared to study the 2002 Gujarat riots and their aftermath. Most people wouldn’t have taken the documentary seriously had it been left to its normal course. The article mentioned above cites the example of what happened to American singer and actress Barbra Streisand. She filed a case against photographer Kenneth Adelman and got results that were just the opposite of whatever she wanted. Adelman was the founder of the Califo...

The Communist The Kerala state budget was passed yesterday adding a lot more burden to the people. The prices of most things went up. “Oh my God!” I said reading about the additional cess on petrol. The simple delight of driving will now become dearer. Maggie came rushing hearing my cry of shock. “What happened? Are you ok?” She thought I had developed a sudden heart problem because my palm was on my chest. She came and rubbed my chest frantically. I loved it. If a budget can bring so much love, let there be more budgets even if it means paying what I cannot really afford, I thought as I reclined on my sofa to enjoy Maggie’s caressing palm on my chest. Maggie is no fool, however. “You’re faking it?” She asked. “No, darling,” I said earnestly. “Look at this.” I showed her the newspaper. “So what?” She asked after absorbing the price rises. She has mastered the art of absorbing anything having lived with me for more than quarter of a century. “Even our simple drives will beco...

Book Review Title: 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World Author: Elif Shafak Publisher: Penguin 2019 Pages: 310 This is a novel that starts with the death of its protagonist. Leila, a prostitute in Istanbul, is murdered in the night. Her body is found in the morning, dumped among garbage. The message by the killers is that she is garbage. The novel tells her story along with that of a few other people who are social outcasts. Nalan (transvestite), Zaynab (dwarf), Humeyra (unloved daughter-in-law), Jameelah (unloved daughter), and Sinan (helpless, spineless man) are the other major characters. They are all Muslims (that matters). Jameelah is from Somalia and Zaynab from Lebanon. The others are from Turkey itself. They are all driven to Istanbul – “city of the discontented and dreamers” & “city of scars” – by similar reasons except Sinan who came in search of his love, Leila. The plot unfolds mostly in the Street of Brothels and other such shady places. Leila did ...