Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Valentines looking out for imperial moral police  Valentine was executed because he encouraged love between man and woman. Ironies are aplenty in his death. First of all, he was a celibate Catholic priest. He lived in the Roman Empire in a time when the Emperor believed in stuff like One Nation One Religion , and Valentine was preaching a different religion. Religion is a national affair as far as emperors are concerned. The emperor decides which god you will pray to. What else is a ruler for, if he can’t decide what you will do? So, Claudius II ordered the death of Rev Valentine because Valentine preached love which Claudius didn’t love. That was way back in the third century CE. There was no social media in those days for young lovers to start a hashtag like #SaveValentineFromBrutalClaudius . Claudius didn’t want young men to marry. He was a champion of Roman masculinity. Men will lose their masculinity if they marry, he believed. Like India’s current Prime Minister. So Cla...

Illustration by Google Gemini I was about to go to bed earlier than usual because I was feeling terribly sleepy. I had slept relatively much less in the past few nights owing to certain urgent evaluation jobs of my school that had to be completed within short period. However, as I stepped into my bedroom, I was reminded of my duties as a patriot and my sleep left me instantly. My Prime Minister sleeps just three hours a day, as he has told us repeatedly. In a 2019 interview that actor Akshay Kumar conducted for ANI, Modi’s answer to the actor’s question about the brevity of his sleep was unabashed: “Even Obama asked me this question.” By the way, Akshay Kumar was a Canadian citizen in those days. But he was a true Indian patriot, according to Modi’s partymen. Probably because he slept less than the average Indians. A few years after Kumar’s interview, Chandrakant Patel of Maharashtra BJP reduced Modi’s sleep to a meagre two hours. “Modiji works 22 hours of the day for the welfare...

Javed Akthar in 2012 Octogenarian Javed Akthar, celebrated screenwriter and lyricist of Bollywood, was asked a question recently by a group of youngsters. Will art and literature have much relevance in the future? Akthar’s answer was an allegory. Millions of fish are caught every day by humans. They are skinned brutally, cut into pieces, cooked in infinitely varied ways, and savoured on dining tables all over the world. We, humans, raise our voice in defence of a lot of animals: cows, dogs, and wild animals too. But no one raises even a feeble cry of protest on behalf of the fish. Do you know why? Because the fish don’t cry. In fact, they do cry; but their cries have no voice. No one hears their cries. The fish are voiceless. The cry of the voiceless is literature. Art is the music of the voiceless. And so they will continue to be relevant as long as there are voiceless creatures on earth. The Jews were the voiceless fish during Hitler’s march of racial triumph – six million of the...

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...