Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Dr Jose Maliekal SDB   Dr Jose Maliekal SDB is a thinker, professor of philosophy, social activist and a Catholic priest. He has written a book, Standstill Utopias , based on his doctoral thesis. His observations on reality tend to be keen and profound. Hence his views on my writings are of much significance to me personally. He has been magnanimous with his review of my novel, Black Hole   and I am thrilled to present the review below.  ***** Literature is an introduction to where and how we live and the challenges that face our time and society. In many ways, literature is an introduction to who we are, or ought to be, as people. It helps us to be ‘critical insiders” to borrow a leaf from U.R. Ananthamurthy, a doyen of Indian literature (Kunal Ray, The Purpose of Literature , https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-purpose-of-literature/article36167231.ece ). Being a critical insider would mean not being a spectator to all what is going on around us. As human beings...

Two things happened this morning. One was a message from long-term friend, Jose Maliekal, who is a Salesian priest. The second was that I started reading a novel titled A Man Called Ove . Both together reminded me of the challenge I have undertaken for February: Blogchatter’s #WriteAPageADay . Maliekal’s message was about Don Bosco’s love for keeping the boys under his care productively engaged even if that meant disturbing the sleep of a visiting bishop. Was the missionary in Don Bosco driven by recklessness or temerity? Maliekal’s message raised that question. And the message ended with an apparently wavering hope that I loved Don Bosco though I didn’t love his priests. Ove in the novel is a 59-year-old man (just a couple of years younger than me) who is “the kind of man who points at people he doesn’t like the look of, as if they were burglars and his forefinger a policeman’s torch.” Once upon a time I was just like that. And Don Bosco’s priests and some other equally spirit e...

Today is Holy Saturday for Christians all over the world. Yesterday was Good Friday which my blog commemorated in a post titled Good Friday and Some Arithmetic . My enduring friend Jose Maliekal commented on the post thus:  I take Maliekal seriously for many reasons. So I spent some time thinking about Holy Saturday and what descended into my consciousness was a profound silence, the silence of a tomb, a tomb that held the dead body of a young man whose goodness could not survive in the world of powerful people. That is the helplessness of Holy Saturday. True, Easter will follow it. What follows Easter, however, will be yet another religion, its mumbo-jumbo and the inevitable power games. I’d prefer the silence of Holy Saturday. You’re right, Maliekal, Arikuzha’s nights are silent, eerily so. [ For the benefit of other readers, Arikuzha is my village .] I miss the sounds of crickets that used to resound in the nights here until a decade back. Development, Vikas, has driven away...

Dr Jose Maliekal Dr Jose Maliekal is a Catholic priest who is the Principal of St John’s Regional Seminary, Kondadaba, Andhra Pradesh. He is a profound thinker who perceives the realities around us very keenly and discerningly. I am pleased to bring here this interview with him which was held via email. He speaks frankly about contemporarily relevant topics such as religious conversion, love jihad, fascism in India, and the farmers’ agitation.   Apart from being a professor of philosophy and a deep thinker, you are also a Christian priest who has worked for decades among the Dalits in Andhra Pradesh. Many of the Dalits have been converted to Christianity. Why do you think they choose Christianity? The Dalits negotiate religion in the particular context of their political, social and economic marginality and appropriate the various elements of religion to respond to their own needs and to pursue their own dreams. This dynamics challenges the missionaries as well as those who ...

While my car was getting serviced, I walked into a multiplex this morning in order to while away the three hours demanded by the service provider.   My wife suggested watching a movie and the ticket was available for the Malayalam movie, Godha .   Godha is just an average movie about the sport of wrestling which is dying in Kerala.   There are a few individuals in a village who still live with nostalgic memories about the wrestling trophies they had won in their youth.   Into their midst walks a young girl, Aditi, from Punjab.   Aditi is a wrestler.   She revives the akhara and brings laurels to the village and the state. There’s a bit of romance to add the necessary spice to the plot.   Anjaneya Das, the protagonist, had gone to Punjab to study where he met Aditi.   It’s that connection which brings Aditi to Das’s village.   While Das is in Punjab he tells a companion about what beef means to the people of Kerala.   “I...