Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Book Review info@hoffen.in Identity quest is one of the classical themes in literature.  However, gender identity quest is relatively new.  It is also one of the most painful quests, perhaps, because not belonging to either of the most natural genders can be an excruciating experience psychologically.  The agony is aggravated by the attitudes of the ignorant and insensitive general society towards transgender people.  The authors of the book under review approach the theme in the simplest manner possible: by presenting a trans-woman and her problems.  Kusum was born a male who was very uncomfortable with that gender.  It’s only the body that is masculine.  The spirit is feminine.  The father is unable to accept that reality.  Hence the offspring is abandoned.  But (s)he is happy to get the support of a friend who eventually becomes a surgeon and will perform the sex-changing surgery.  The love between Kusum and her doctor-friend was not merely friendship.  The emotions

Fiction He was the Corpse Man.  Savakkaran , they called him in his and their language.  Some refined it to Mortuary Man.  Those who knew him personally and did not want to equate him with his job called him Balan.  Balan kept corpses frozen in arrays of drawers.  Until somebody came to claim them.  Or until nobody claimed and order was given to dispose off the body in the nearby electric crematorium which was operated by his wife, Latika.  Death was their family business.  He, Balagangadharan, was the keeper of corpses and Latika, his wife, was the disposer of corpses.   Both the mortuary and the crematorium belonged to the government.  While the crematorium seldom experienced any discrimination between rich corpses and poor corpses, the mortuary often did.  Rich corpses preferred private mortuaries, those in the hospitals meant for the rich.  Government mortuaries received poor corpses.  Or corpses of criminals.  Or anonymous corpses.  Abandoned corpses.  Who said dea

Source As soon as the power fails, the mosquitoes fly in from God-knows-where.  The mosquito repellent is the fortress which they cannot penetrate.  Blessed be the man who invented it.  Blessed is the man who does not suck others’ blood and prevents others from doing it. Mosquitoes are born to suck blood.  Even at the milk-swollen breasts, they will suck only blood.  The very purpose of their existence is to suck blood and to blast our eardrums with their buzz.  They think they are entertaining us with their music.  And they put up their daises where three or four creatures gather innocuously, for purchasing the provisions for the body or for their tête-à-tête with their god, food for the soul.  All around the dais they will erect monstrous loud speakers.  And the buzz will begin.  Ear-splitting buzz.  The buzz will lull us to sleep.  And then they suck our blood.  Giving our blood, we attain our orgasms.  Most mosquitoes move through twilights and moonlights.  But they