Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Short story Shilavati was bored.   She had everything she wanted.   A huge LED screen with more than 200 TV channels and a resounding Dolby sound system filled the vacuum of her days with light and sound.   There were manservants and maidservants waiting for her orders to fill the emptiness in her ego with a glass of fruit juice or a ride to the shopping mall.   Yet she felt bored.   Her two children were at school and husband was in the office of the MNC which paid him more money than they really needed.   The family used to go for an outing almost every weekend.   Yet she felt bored.   She switched the channels on the TV. The English news channel was discussing whether death penalty fitted in with contemporary civilisation.   Within months of becoming the President, Mr Pranab Mukherjee had sent two persons to the gallows and dismissed the mercy petitions of the killers of Rajiv Gandhi. Why is there so much brouhaha about executing some criminals?   Shilavati wondered.   Aren’

Author: Ken Follett Publisher: Penguin, 2012        Pages: 940 Price: Rs399 Ken Follett is a master of epic tales.  He has woven mesmerising stories with wide arrays of memorable characters who are the warp and weft of the fabric of history.  They are characters who either shape the history or are shaped by it.  They are masters or victims.  But they are never puppets dangling from the mechanical fingers of some robotic history.  They are the normal human beings, partly good and partly evil, some strong and others weak, some of whom dare while others cower. Winter of the World differs from those novels, however.  Its characters are more puppets dangling from the warp and weft of history.  The real persons who shape and manipulate the history are Hitler and Stalin.  Yet they hardly appear in the novel; they work like invisible gods through their agents, the Gestapo and the NKVD, both of which are ruthless in hunting down perceived enemies. The plot of the nov

What seas what mountains what planets Or a honeymoon cottage on an exotic isle    with a bride on hire to suck the lust What car what villa what gadget Or a smorgasbord spread out in paradise Where does it end, this pursuit? How many millions or billions should the bank balance be How many villas and hectares will this body need How many parties bacchanalian and rumbustious Before I hear the music in the background? Note : This is the first poem I've written in years.  Maybe, when you sit idle with your foot caged in plaster of Paris poetry forces itself into your soul.  I have an excuse, however, for letting poetry make this forceful entry: I was reading something on philosopher Schopenhauer who thought that a man who has no mental life goes greedily from sensation to sensation in search of happiness and at last he/she is conquered by the nemesis of the idle rich or the reckless voluptuary - ennui.