Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Fiction D riving is what I do when I want to get away from. From what? From whom? Well, you see, I’m sort of an escapist. I would get away from anything. From my job that I am incredibly passionate about. From my home which is the only paradise I can ever afford. From my wife, whom I love a lot and who loves me even more. Well, you know, I’m that sort of a disgruntled old man who is unable to shed his narcissism in spite of all the bangs and bashes it has received for decades from well-meaning self-righteous religious people. I suppose you must have understood by now what kind of a man I am. I am old. I am disgruntled according to those around me especially the religious sort of people. And, if you ask me, I don’t really care for other people which means I should be an ascetic. I get overwhelmed, rarely though, by a desire to know what lies beneath the banality and morbidity of human life. That is what asceticism is about, I guess. My wife thinks I’m a bit cranky and hence sh...

  Hasina Kharbhih, image from the website of her NGO As I was reading Ashish Kundra’s book, A Resurgent Northeast: Narratives of Change , the name of Hasina Kharbhih caught my attention. It didn’t take me much time to verify that it was the same Hasina whom I taught in high school back in the late 1980s. This is what Kundra says about her: Sexual exploitation of urban migrants pushed seventeen-year-old Hasina Kharbhih to start the Impulse NGO Network in Meghalaya. She offers a contrarian view of the skilling programme run by the government. ‘Skill India turned our rural youth into labourers,’ she fumes. She pledged to stem the tide of migration of rural women by leveraging an exclusive source of strength of the region: handlooms. Over the years, she has created a network of 30,000 artisans…. A Fulbright scholar, Hasina’s work has won her many accolades and awards. I had read about Hasina a few years back in the magazine, Down To Earth . Kundra’s book gave me more information...

Book  Title: Up Against Darkness Author: Medha Deshmukh Bhaskaran Publisher: Sakal Media, Pune, 2023 Pages: 295 According to an estimate by the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), there are over eight lakh women sex workers in India. A good many of them are treated as worse than animals. This book, Up Against Darkness , is a detailed study on the red-light areas of Ahmednagar in Maharashtra. The book highlights the phenomenal service rendered by Dr Girish Kulkarni and his wife Prajakta for the sex workers of Ahmednagar. As a boy in school, Girish was restless and full of energy. “He became unruly in class, troubling the teachers and other school children.” The neighbours too had to bear the brunt of his mischiefs. When Girish saw a sex worker smacking her little son in order to get him out of her client’s way, his heart melted. He was a young college student then. He volunteered to take care of the little boy and eventually he became an apostle of the sex workers...

Fiction The hill looked absolutely desolate in spite of the massive and aging rubber trees. The flourishing undergrowth bore a solemn testament to neglect. The air grew heavy as I ascended the hill in the evening of a cool and dry day in the monsoon season in Kerala. My destination was the mansion on top of the hill. It had belonged to my uncle who is now no more. His lawyer informed me a few months back that Uncle Jo had bequeathed the mansion to me merely because I loved books just as he did. As a child I used to climb up this same rugged path quite frequently just to visit Uncle Jo who lived all alone in his palatial mansion with the company of Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Dostoevsky and so on. I inherited my admiration for these writers from Uncle Jo. Uncle was married once upon a time, people say. But I knew Uncle as a man who lived a reclusive life on top of that hill. His income came from the rubber trees which were tapped by a few labourers who all left the place when the tre...

Book Title: Caged Tiger: How too much government is holding Indians back Author: Subhashish Bhadra Publisher: Bloomsbury 2023 Pages: 303 For over two centuries the British held India captive. And then Indian politicians did the same. This book shows you how India’s leaders held their own country captive almost all through – with the exception of the first few decades. 77 years is not too short a period of time for a nation, especially one that is as huge as India, to reclaim itself from the ravages of history. What has India achieved in fact? “Governments have failed to provide the basic needs of life, such as clean air and water. India has 22 of the 30 most polluted cities in the world, with a child dying every 3 minutes from inhaling toxic pollutants. Also, India has failed to translate its remarkable economic gains into better lives for its most vulnerable; 35 percent of children under five are stunted…” Now, even Bangladesh is doing better than India though it “is poo...