Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Kingini (middle) and Plato Kingini, my demure and pretty cat, was going to give birth. So she started pampering me very uncharacteristically. She would never let me pamper her. She wouldn’t even come near me except for food. So, when she started rubbing her golden fur against my shin, I knew it was time for me to arrange her labour room. For my earlier queens, I used cardboard cartons in which Amazon delivered stuff. But now Amazon is using some cheap plastic-like material for delivering items. So I brought a plastic basket, the largest I could find in the shop I know, and made a bed of newspapers and a piece of a bedsheet. Kingini approved of it. In a few days’ time, on 7 Feb 2025 to be precise, Kingini gave birth to two cute kittens that looked exactly like my Plato, my beloved male cat who is the first son of Kingini. X Plato was named after the philosopher on a sheer whim of mine. I had had a drink when I christened him. That’s how it usually works: a bit of brandy or whisky ...

Illustration by Google Gemini “Being alone has this negative connotation, like it’s a punishment, but you’re learning to be friends with yourself,” says a Time article quoting a young college graduate who had just migrated to a new city where she had no friends or relatives. She became her own best friend, she says, instead of going in search of other friends. She went on solo hikes, to concerts, museums, movies, and dinners. Solitude is very useful, the article goes on to argue. It can be a means of self-care and self-exploration. The article also suggests some solo activities like low-skates outing and cultivating a hobby. I’m leaving my teaching profession at the end of this month. Maggie asked me what I’d do with all the free time. Wouldn’t I feel lonely sitting at home? She knows very well that I love to read a lot, write occasionally, and travel whenever I feel like. So I’m not going to have any problem with how to spend all the time that would lie at my disposal from Mar...

One of the histories of my family, written by a cousin of mine, traces the roots of the Matheikals to one Namboothiri family that was converted to Christianity by none other than Saint Thomas, disciple of Jesus. When I pointed out to the writer that there was no clear historical evidence of Namboothiri presence in Kerala until about the 8 th century CE, his answer was that available family legends formed the basis of his claim. There are many Christians in Kerala who make similar claims: that their ancient ancestors were Namboothiris (Brahmins) converted by Thomas. There is a faint possibility of Thomas, disciple of Jesus, having come to Kerala. There was active trade between Kerala and Rome in those days. Pliny the Elder (1 st century CE), Roman historian, mentions Kerala’s spices, pearls, and ivory, in his work Natural History . He was actually complaining about Rome’s loss of wealth due to its imports from India. There are travelogues that describe trade routes between Europ...

Illustration by Copilot Designer India’s New Education Policy [NEP 2020] lays much emphasis on what it calls Indian Knowledge Systems [IKS]. It refers to the integration of traditional Indian wisdom, including Vedic mathematics, Ayurveda, and ancient science and arts, into modern education. While some of that ‘ancient’ wisdom may be relevant today and some may be innocuous, much of that won’t do any good other than give us a hollow sense of pride in the antiqueness of our history. That sort of pride is as useful as one’s hope to have calluses in his backside because his great-great grandfather used to ride on an elephant’s back. The most striking irony about NEP 2020 is the emphasis laid on Sanskrit . Sanskrit was deemed to be the divine language in ancient India and only the upper caste people were allowed to study it. If a lower caste person even happens to hear Sanskrit literature being recited, that person’s ears were to be damaged forever by pouring molten lead into them. Now,...

  I’m retiring from teaching for the third time now. 28 Feb 2025 will be my last day at the present school from where I retired twice earlier. The first time was just a formality because when I completed the official age for retirement the school gave me a formal farewell and then shifted my name to another ledger in the account books. Nothing changed really other than the remuneration method. My second retirement was at the end of the last academic session in March 2024 when I decided that I was growing too grotesque for the contemporary teenagers. My young students called it ‘generation gap.’ They assumed that I belonged to the library shelf of the musty volumes of Britannica Encyclopaedia while they belonged to YouTube . They didn’t know that I had a YouTube video in which my cat was an emergent hero. And that there were a few more serious videos too which didn’t get much traction because the youngsters for whom it was meant thought that I belonged to the generation which ...