Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s ring.   They were

Fiction http://www.flickr.com/groups/kidz_art_program/pool/16817853@N00/ “One day in the life of a residential school teacher,” I began writing the blog. “What do you think you are?” asked my wife with marked irritation.   “Ivan Denisovich?” Ivan Denisovich Shukhov is the protagonist of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s novel, One Day in the Life Ivan Denisovich .   Ivan was a prisoner in a Stalinist labour camp in Russia.   The fellow was an innocent peasant, almost illiterate, and very simple.   The prison routine was meant to dehumanise the prisoners, but Ivan survived.   He survived because he found meaning in that absurdly oppressive life, a meaning found by living intensively.   He slogged like a slave and ate like a wolf.   When he worked on a brick wall he worked as though every inch of it belonged to him.   He was a Sisyphus without the spirit of rebellion.   He was proud of whatever he did. “I’m Boxer,” I replied to my wife’s question. “Who are you going t

I'm writing a poem, don't disturb, I said. Broken lines is not poem, she said. Broken dreams are, I said.

Dr Ambedkar and Untouchability: Analysing and Fighting Caste Author: Christophe Jaffrelot Publisher: Permanent Black, Delhi, (2005) Pages: 205 Price: Rs250 [2009 edition] There’s an idiom in Malayalam which may be translated as: Unable to swallow because it’s bitter and unable to spit out because it’s sweet .   Dr B R Ambedkar was one such man in Indian history.   Right from Gandhi through Nehru, Rajendra Prasad and Madan Mohan Malaviya down to Arun Shourie, quite many people had serious problems with Ambedkar.   Shourie even went to the extent of writing a book, Worshipping False Gods: Ambedkar and the Facts which have been Erased (1997).   On the other hand, even right wing organizations and political parties such as RSS and BJP have tried to co-opt Ambedkar into the Hindu pantheon of great leaders. As Christophe Jaffrelot says in his book under review, “On the one hand it [BJP] praises Ambedkar, the symbol of the Dalit movement because it cannot alienate th

This is a season of farewells for me.  I have lost count of the persons who have already left or are being hauled up before the firing line by the Orwellian Big Brother in the last quarter of the year.  The person, to whom we bid farewell today, however, had chosen to leave on his own.  He is going as the Principal of R K International School , Sarkaghat, Himachal Pradesh. Mr S K Sharma was a colleague and friend.  He belongs to the species of human beings whose company enriches you and whose departure creates a vacuum, notwithstanding the fact that Nature which abhors vacuum will fill it in its own unique ways.  Administration is an art for Mr Sharma, though he calls it a skill.  Management lessons, strategies and heuristics are only guidelines.  No one can manage people merely with the help of these guidelines.  People are not machines which can be controlled mechanically.  Machines work according to rules.  People do not do so usually.  “... intelligent, alert people

Suddenly Pappu remembered.  His English teacher had given him a project.  He had to write 5 sentences about his grandfather or grandmother, about their likes and dislikes.  So Pappu ran into grandpa's room. Grandpa was dyeing his hair.  Why should a 65 year-old man dye his hair?  Pappu was a precocious child.  Though he was studying in class 5 some of the questions that rose in his mind belonged to class 10. "Grey hairs are a sign of maturity and wisdom," explained Grandpa with a mischievous grin.  "I possess neither of them.  That's why I'm dyeing my hair." The next morning, as soon as the school bus dropped him on the campus, Pappu ran to Matheikal Sir, one of the teachers in the school, and asked, "Sir, why don't you dye your hair?"