Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Introductory Note : CBSE has revised its assessment pattern for Class 12 English by reducing the comprehension passages from 3 to 2. Instead of 2 passages of 12 marks and 10 marks each, now it will be one passage of 20 marks. The note making passage will continue without any substantial change. Since new sample question papers are not yet available easily, I’m presenting below one comprehension passage in the new pattern. The passage is extracted from Shashi Tharoor’s latest book: The Paradoxical Prime Minister [slightly edited]. Read the passage and answer the questions that follow . 1.       Secularism in India did not mean separation of religion from state. Instead, secularism in India means a state that is equally indulgent of all religious groups, and favours none. There is no established state religion; the adherent of every faith is a stakeholder in the Indian state. Nor does it mean secularity in the French sense. The French concept keeps r...

Kittu thinks he deserves the best. “Owners of dogs will have noticed that if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realise that if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.” I came across those words of Christopher Hitchens purely by coincidence and the very next thing I did was to search more about Hitchens. The titles of his books like God is not Great and The Portable Atheist found me logging on to Amazon India to search whether the books are available. Someone who makes that profound observation about cats and dogs has a heart in addition to a brain and hence tends to be worth reading. I know enough about cats and dogs now to stake that claim. My brother’s dogs love me more than my own cat. Kittu, my cat, was abandoned by someone at my doorstep when he was just old enough to walk on his own. He chose to...

Towards the end of Sawan [my Delhi school] I love to try varieties of food though I am not a glutton. Not a gourmet, either. A philanderer with food, if you like. I can relish Khasi tribal foods as heartily as Kentucky Fried Chicken. It was a sheer pragmatic need that taught me to love whatever the man on the next table ate. Rather, woman, I should say. My experiments with food started when I was working as a teacher in a high school at a place called Jaiaw on the outskirts of Shillong. Jaiaw is just a kilometre, as the crow flies, from the main market (Bara Bazar) of Shillong. But it had no pretensions to being anywhere near the capital of the state. Jaiaw was like a small junction in a village for all the eight years I worked there. Nothing ever changed: the same narrow streets, the same houses on either side of them, the same small shops. There was just one small Khasi restaurant which looked more like a shed than a tea shop. I had my lunch there every day for quite som...

Take a walk with me on these dusty lanes and be gracious enough to listen to the perverted music of my heartbeats. Perverted, yes, that’s how it has been described by many people for years and I have learnt to accept that description just because I’ve understood that I don’t belong to these lanes. But have you ever noticed that those who claim that they are evil are usually no worse than you? Has it ever occurred to you that most evils are perpetrated by people who claim to be good? Look at all those people who carry guns in hands and venom in hearts and persuade us to believe that they plunder and rape and kill for the sake of the greater common good. They have been doing it for centuries. It might have been the bow and the arrow instead of the gun in those good old days. It might have been the burning stakes or the gleaming swords. This evening when our shadows rise to meet us, you see terror in a handful of dust lying on this very same lane that we walk on. The lane has...

“Those with heart problems should not climb,” warns a signboard at the threshold of the ascent to the Edakkal Caves in Wayanadu district of Kerala. My students whom I was accompanying pointed out the board to me. “My heart is good,” I told them. There are quite a few places on the way that try your heart’s strength. The climb is quite steep in those places. I did not pant a bit, however. “What is the secret of your health, sir?” asked one of the students who was struggling for breath. “My heart is good,” I answered. The half-hour ascent ends in a cave with quite a few charming slits in rocks, crevices that let in sunbeams that light up the cave delightfully. The history of the cave goes back to eight millennia, the official tourist guide there told us pointing at the pictorial writings on one of the granite walls. Some of the drawings have possible links with the Indus Valley Civilisation, says the guide. Later I checked Wikipedia which says: The caves contain drawings...

The village where I live now I have passed through hells. Some of them were creations of my own immaturity and other personal drawbacks and quite many were generously awarded by people who decided that I deserved them. Religious people are particularly adept at creating hells for others who they regard as sinners. There were times when I thought that life was an endless pain. There were moments when I longed to put an end to it. I wished to hide myself in some fathomless cave on a wild mountain. A few individuals, hardly one or two, were kind enough to counsel me in those times: “This too will pass.” I was not at all certain that it would pass. On the contrary, I accepted my definition of life as an endless pain with certain Buddhist resignation and acquired stoicism.   When I left my lecturer’s job in Shillong at the age of 41, in utter despair and apparent disrepair, I had no hope of a bright future ahead. It was a risk that I decided to take before putting an e...

Bingle Bog became silent instantly. All the animals and birds were stunned into silence by a strange music. They were all used to the croaking of the bullfrog so far. The frog croaked away day and night and called it ‘The Voice of the Heart’. The frog considered himself the King of the Bog. It was then that the nightingale appeared on the banyan tree and started singing. The nightingale soon became a sensation in the Bog. All the animals and birds gravitated towards the banyan tree to listen to the nightingale’s songs. “You sing quite well, you know,” the Frog said to the Nightingale when the singing stopped. “Oh, thank you so much,” said the Nightingale. “It’s so kind of you.” “You know me?” Frog was a little surprised in spite of himself. He had come wearing his latest suit gifted by a bhakt. His name was embossed in gold on the coat. “Oh, who doesn’t know you ji?” Nightingale said without concealing her admiration. “You are the great king of this Bog, the ...