Tomichan Matheikal's blog

  Fiction It was about midnight when I stopped my car near the roadside eatery known as thattukada in Kerala. I still had another 27 kilometres to go, according to Google map. Since I didn’t always trust Google map, I decided to ask one of the few men sipping red tea or black coffee along with some snack at the thattukada . “How far is Anakkad from here?” Anakkad was my destination, where my friend Varghese lived. He had invited me to spend a day with him in his god-forsaken village on the edge of the Gavi Forest. I love forests. I also love night drives. “You’ll get good roads until just a few kilometres from Anakkad,” Varghese said meaning that my night drive was no big deal. It was mostly state highway all along and I had nothing to fear. “But I do want some fear,” I said intending to sound funny. “For example, what if I get a ghost asking for a hitchhike? That’d be good for the next blog post.” “Make sure that it’s a male ghost,” Varghese laughed. “Female ghosts will...

  The Messiah who appeared in my village today The pic was clicked on my mobile phone from a distance of more than 100 m. Narendra Modi incarnated as a Messiah of the Hindus when Hinduism fell in danger [ Hindu Khatre Mein Hai ]. I came across another Messiah today in the empty junction near my home just an hour or so before noon. This Messiah intends to save the whole mankind, not just Hindus or Christians or any particular sect though his god is Jesus. I had gone to buy a few grocery items from a shop just a kilometre from home. I live in a village and this shop is in the village too though the road and the junction as seen in the pic will give you the feel of a highway or something. This is Kerala, a state which the Yogi of UP loves to project as the antithesis of his Vrindavan. As I stopped my vehicle in front of the grocery shop, the words that boomed from a loudspeaker fell on my eardrums like a thunderclap. “The world is going to end.” I did not get out of my car. What i...

Characters are what fascinate me the most in a novel. They must belong to our own planet in the first place. Then they must be complex enough to be of some interest to me. Their problems must have some similarities, even if remote, with mine or other ordinary people’s. Their pursuits must belong to the same world that I inhabit. They must breathe the same air that I breathe even if the degree of pollution varies. They must have dreams and nightmares that kick at the ghosts within me. I find it difficult to enjoy eminent contemporary writers like Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy [ The Ministry of Utmost Happiness , I mean] because their characters belong to some other planet apparently. Rushdie’s latest protagonist, Quichotte , is “a travelling man of Indian origin, advancing years and retreating mental powers,” in love with TV shows. He devours “morning shows, daytime shows, late-night talk shows, soaps, situation comedies, Lifetime Movies, hospital dramas, police series, vampire a...

How Cleopatra looked like, according to reference.com When Maggie appreciated my last post, Cleopatra’s Lovers , I commented about Cleopatra’s tragedy. “Her tragedy was that the entire spectrum of her character was passed through a kind of reverse prism that reduces all the vibrant colours into just one prurient shade. Look at how the Romans describe her in Shakespeare’s play. Lustful gypsy, Egyptian dish, and whore . Those are some of the phrases used by the Romans. They brutally stifled Cleopatra’s vibrant colours. That is the real tragedy.” Maggie yawned and said, “Will this (pointing at me) tragedy go and take bath so that we can have dinner?” It was past eight in the evening. As I stood under the shower, a reverse prism haunted my thinking. An infinite variety of colours dancing like an intoxicated peacock was forced by some invisible force through a prism and what emerged was a grey ray as bland as a moral science class. “If Cleopatra’s nose had been shorter, the whole hi...

Sarah Bernhardt as Cleopatra I was in love with Cleopatra as a young man. Yes, the same Egyptian queen who lived and died a few decades before Christ. The one who enticed many a great man including Mark Antony, the Roman General. I had a cat named after her until a few months back, a tabby with seductive eyes and who loved to lie in my lap. My feline Cleopatra could not survive her third litter. Shakespeare portrayed Cleopatra as a royal seductress. “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale / Her infinite variety,” Shakespeare made one of his characters describe her. Mark Antony fell in love with that variety of moods and passions. Shakespeare’s Cleopatra could laugh and weep, love and hate, chide and exalt as she pleased and all of that suited her. It is that kaleidoscopic Cleopatra that I fell in love with. That Cleopatra once inspired a short story of mine in which a young soldier of the ordinary rank falls perilously in love with the queen. He is aware of the dangers of his lo...

  First edition (1922) Probably no other book taught me humility as did Ulysses by James Joyce. I read it in my late 20s just because it was one of the most discussed works of literature among literary intellectuals and geniuses in those days. I can’t even say that I read it though I did reach the last chapter which nearly drove me crazy. I can say with much confidence that I understood very little of the novel then. I never laid my hands on it again. I didn’t dare to. The book has completed a century of its existence now. It was originally published in 1918 as a serialised work in the Little Review , but appeared as a book first in Feb 1922. The serial had already created quite a furore and hence the book was published from Paris. Copies of the first English edition were burned by the New York post office authorities while the second edition copies were seized by the Folkestone Customs authorities. It took ten years for United States District Court to decide that the novel wa...

Image from literaturemini ‘Ozymandias’ is one of Shelley’s popular poems though it is not a typical poem of his. It presents a mighty ruler of some “antique land.” Ozymandias is his name and his statue, which is now in ruins, can still be seen in the desert sands. “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone” stand erect on a pedestal while the head lies in the sand wearing a sneering frown on the wrinkled lips. On the pedestal is the inscription: “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my works… and despair.” But all his might now lies in utter decay. He is nothing but a “colossal wreck.” All conquerors, however mighty and contemptuous of others, will fall to dust one day. Even their conquests won’t be remembered. What the world wants are not conquerors but redeemers. That is why Ozymandias and his type are destined to lie broken in some distant sands of forsaken history. What Russia is doing to Ukraine is yet another inhuman deed through which Putin seems to cock a snook at the...