Tomichan Matheikal's blog

The calendar will be replaced, The old has to give way. Even the voice, for language too grows old; Rather, language renews itself like the proverbial phoenix The new year is for making new mistakes Trying out new trails Falling into new traps and ditches Learning new lessons Writing new stories Discovering new voices   Read Sunaina Sharma's Review of The Nomad Learns Morality HERE

Courtesy: Joshi Danie l More than a century and a half ago, Charles Dickens converted selfish Scrooge into a compassionate human being on the Christmas Day.  Today’s Indian Scrooges have awarded themselves a gargantuan pay hike on the occasion of Christmas which has already been converted into Good Governance Day.  Our MPs have decided to double their salary .  If the proposal is approved (it will be), each MP will take home Rs 280,000 every month as their salary.  Plus all the freebies whose cost will run into lakhs of rupees.  Plus a doubled pension.  When the vast majority of Indians who slog their entire life for pittances will retire in their old age with no benefits such as pensions, an MP who may serve a term of a few months or 5 years at the most will enjoy a monthly pension that is higher than the annual income of many families in the country. Democracy has been strengthened, mocks a cartoon in today’s Malayala Manorama referring to the MPs’ pay hike. 

The seeker walked on Winter raged all around And inside Deep in the marrow of his bones Fog descended Making the night darker Darkness mounted all around And inside Lying down on the veranda Of some shop or whatever He longed for warmth For a touch He did not open his eyes When the touch came Another body Snuggled close to him Another seeker, he thought, Of light amidst thickening fogs Of warmth against mounting cold Another seeker, another absurdity. When the dawn broke The seeker woke And saw his night’s companion, a dog, Walk away indifferently having stretched himself. From Bhatti Mines, Delhi, where seekers gather galore

Book Review Title: The Bestseller She Wrote Author: Ravi Subramanian Publisher: Westland Ltd, 2015 Pages: 391 Price: Rs 295 Paraphrasing Francis Bacon, one may say that some books are potboilers, a few are the fire beneath the pot, and still few are the food inside the pot.  Ravi Subramanian’s latest novel, The Bestseller She Wrote , belongs to the first category.  It has all the ingredients of a successful Indian potboiler.  There is the hero who is a successful executive in a leading bank and also a famous writer, a heroine who is the quintessential Indian wife with all the virtues and no vices, and a villain who is ambitious, scheming, manipulative and above all a ravishing beauty who is happy to shed her clothes as required by the author (or the director of the movie).  The main plot revolves round a modern version of the ancient triangular love.  Aditya Kapoor is a happily married, successful banker and “a rock star author.”  Maya, his wife, is a parago

A church in Kerala Somewhere in the gloom God took flesh upon himself He washed its feet fed the spirit’s hunger and went to hang himself On a cross. Flesh haunts flesh As the cross haunts God To be nailed to each other: The eternal quest. I wrote this poem about 20 years ago.  In those 20 years I came across very many people who were affiliated to different religions.  Some of them tried much to infuse me with their fervour and verve.  Nothing has changed a bit.  Neither me nor them.  The quest of each is different.  And that's an eternal quest.  Even God is helpless.

One of the best poems about Christmas that I’ve read is T. S. Eliot’s Journey of the Magi .  My short story, The First Christmas , was largely inspired by this poem. “The world went on with its usual activities of finding food, conquering lands, vanquishing other people, mating and reproducing, killing and plundering, building and destroying.”  The narrator of the story, one of the three magi, says that.  Caspar, the narrator, was on a quest because he could find no meaning in a life that revolved around eating, conquering, mating, and so on.  “If human life is the progress from being a bold, free and above all creative child to cowardice, dependence and creativity that ends in procreation in a span of about 60 or 70 years and then succumbing to death as a child in the garb of an old creature, then, my beloved, I have nothing to be proud of being born a man.”  Thus says the narrator of a Malayalam novel ( Manushyanu Oru Amukham -  A Preface to Man ) which I read soon after

“Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are,”   said Benjamin Franklin.  The release of the 20 year-old man who had perpetrated the most diabolic deeds on a woman against whom he had no reason to have any grudge highlights the helplessness of justice.  Asha Devi, mother of Jyoti Singh, being consoled by Shabana Azmi instead of by Justice The law is helpless since it is bound to follow the written codes.  The criminal was a juvenile when he attacked a 23 year-old paramedical student three years ago in a cold winter night in Delhi.  The juvenile satiated his lust.  Not contented with that, he went on to gratify the monster within him by inflicting the most inhuman atrocities on the hapless victim.   And tomorrow he will walk free.  Because the law is helpless!  The law has to follow the written code that a juvenile cannot be retained in the correction home more than three years.   What is the helplessness of the law doing