Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Fiction Velu was stunned.   He had never felt so helpless before.   “Bhagawan!” His misty eyes went up to the sky.   “What will I do now?” The cattle dealer bluntly refused to buy the bull.   That was Velu’s problem.   Velu earned his livelihood by selling the milk from his cows. Like every herder, Velu too prayed for a female calf whenever a cow became pregnant.   Male calves are useless.   They are usually sold away as soon as they can be weaned from the mother. Male calves are a burden.   But Velu had kept this male calf, fed it well and let it grow into a fleshy bull. Now he had to sell it.   He needed the money to get his daughter admitted to college. In fact, he had kept the calf precisely for this: to ensure higher studies for his daughter. Courtesy: iconsdb “The laws have changed,” said Raghav, the cattle dealer.   “The buyer has to keep the bull for at least six months.”   Bulls were meant to be slaughtered, not pampered.   There was a time when bulls w

Book Review   C an we really separate the spiritual from the temporal?   Can religion make sense as an entity independent of the believer’s socio-political and economic status?   Jose Maliekal’s book, Standstill Utopias? Dalits Encountering Christianity is an academic exploration into that question with particular reference to the Madiga people in Andhra Pradesh.   The book is an adaptation of the author’s doctrinal thesis and hence is academic in style – which means it contains a lot of academic jargon. If the reader is ready to endure words like hermeneutics, essentialization and epistemological, the book can throw a very rewarding light on what religion really means to the downtrodden and how religions need to adapt themselves in order to become really meaningful for such people. The author carried out a protracted research among the Catholic Madigas of Konaseema in the Godavari Delta of Andhra Pradesh.   The result is a transdisciplinary study which combines

While my car was getting serviced, I walked into a multiplex this morning in order to while away the three hours demanded by the service provider.   My wife suggested watching a movie and the ticket was available for the Malayalam movie, Godha .   Godha is just an average movie about the sport of wrestling which is dying in Kerala.   There are a few individuals in a village who still live with nostalgic memories about the wrestling trophies they had won in their youth.   Into their midst walks a young girl, Aditi, from Punjab.   Aditi is a wrestler.   She revives the akhara and brings laurels to the village and the state. There’s a bit of romance to add the necessary spice to the plot.   Anjaneya Das, the protagonist, had gone to Punjab to study where he met Aditi.   It’s that connection which brings Aditi to Das’s village.   While Das is in Punjab he tells a companion about what beef means to the people of Kerala.   “It’s not just a dish,” he says, “beef is a sentime