Tomichan Matheikal's blog

“What is a participial phrase?” asked a teacher who was preparing for an interview because her school was being shut down by vested interests. “No clue,” I said.  “Never heard of such a thing.” She wondered how I had mastered the art of lying so quickly.  She refused to believe that I had not heard of such a thing as participial phrase.  She opened the grammar book she had brought (a fraction of which is here in the picture) and showed me the phrase.  It was a grammar textbook for grade 8.  I flipped through the pages and realised how ineffective English language teaching is in our country.  My memory went back to my childhood when they taught me things like Vocative Case and other Cases all of which disappeared without a trace from English grammar eventually. “See, dear,” I told the teacher, “I didn’t learn English by learning the grammar.  Did you learn your mother tongue by learning its grammar?” She pondered a while and said, “No.” “If I ask you abou

The original Malayalam version of the novel, Goat Days , is celebrating its hundredth reprint.  The novel tells the story of a young man named Najeeb who goes to the Gulf from Kerala in the 1990s in pursuit of his dreams for a better life: a decent home, a TV with a VCP, some gold ornaments for the family... What he gets, however, is a solitary life with a herd of goats somewhere in the Arabian deserts.  He is trapped inescapably between the burning desert sands and the freezing lonely nights.  Every attempt of his to explore beyond the enclosure assigned to him is met with inhuman punishments.  The goats eventually become his friends, the only friends, so much so that he consummates the bond by mating with a she-goat one night.  His dreams do not die, however.  He is innocent enough to dream endlessly.  His innocence and the dreams born of that innocence help him to escape finally. The novel is based on the experiences of a real person who is still living in Kerala, having r

Book Review One of the characters in Salman Rushdie’s controversial novel, The Satanic Verses , argues that doubt rather than disbelief is the opposite of faith because disbelief is as certain as faith.  Doubt is uncertainty, a refusal to take sides.  Doubt is the ultimate openness towards phenomena.  Doubt can question both, faith as well as disbelief.  Jennifer Michael Hecht’s book, Doubt: a History , is a masterpiece that presents to the reader all the great doubters from the ancient Indian Carvakas and the Greek Xenophanes to our own Salman Rushdie and Natalie Angier.  The best feature of the book is its readability in spite of the highly philosophical themes it deals with.  The next best is that it does not confine itself to philosophers, rather it discusses novelists, scientists, historians and others of some significance who have contributed to the history of doubt. Thousands of people have been killed merely because they questioned certain religions.  In the hey

Fiction “Why am I so black when you are so fair?” Veena asked her mother fondly touching the latter’s hand.  “They call me Black Beauty in the school.” “Ask your father,” said mother who was busy cooking the dinner.  Father was dark in complexion, that’s what mother really meant.  But Veena had not grasped that.  She went to her father since he was a better friend than mother.   The only reason why she had bothered to ask mother was that when her first bleeding took place it was to mother that father directed her summarily.  That was just a few days ago.  “There are some things that only your mother can explain,” father had said.  Veena thought that the colour of the skin was also as mysterious a matter as the blood that came out from the unmentionable part of her body. “You got my colour, dear,” said father putting aside Akhil Sharma’s Family Life which he was reading.  “Don’t you like it?” Veena’s nose twitched and her lips pouted.  She realised that she had been u