Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Haryana’s Chief Minister Khattar once asked why women didn’t walk around naked if they wanted to prove their freedom.   You and I, like other rational creatures, will naturally wonder what the connection is between freedom and nudity.   Do the menfolk of Khattar’s state, who have all kinds of bizarre systems of justice like khap panchayats , walk around naked in order to prove their freedom?   Or, are they not free? Well, logic does not play any significant role in Haryana, it seems.   Or for that matter, logic seems to have little to do with Khattar’s party in general.   It is a party which harps on the string of women empowerment through enthralling slogans such beti bachao, beti padhao and so on.   In actual practice, however, the party men want women to play the age-old conventional roles and sit at home with their faces buried behind veils.   The men won’t even hesitate to stalk those women who dare to be out especially after dark as it happened the other day in Chand

From Times of India Sporadic monsoon clouds smudge the night sky as I look out for the moon which struggles to shine through the haze.   There’s going to be partial lunar eclipse tonight, the newspapers say.   I’m interested in eclipses.   I am an eclipse myself. The most memorable eclipse was when I was in Shillong.   It was in the last decade of the millennium.   I was sitting with a friend in his room when the air outside resounded with sounds of tin drums.   We came out to see what was happening.   Everybody was celebrating something.   Our landlady rushed to us with two tin drums and asked us to join.   It took us a while to grasp what was going on.   There was a solar eclipse.   The people believed that a dragon was swallowing the sun and the tin drums were meant to scare the dragon away.   Since the landlady insisted that we join in liberating the sun from the dragon, we did lest we be accused of gross neglect.   How criminal it would be to let the sun be swallow

Fiction Mr Varma was about to rest in peace when something arrested his death.   A police officer stood beside his deathbed demanding his aadhar card.   “You can’t die without the aadhar,” insisted the officer.   “How dare you disobey the rules of the country when we have such an efficient government?” “I’m sorry,” Mr Varma wheezed.   “Not having the aadhar is a crime.   You are under arrest.” The constables moved Mr Varma into the police vehicle which was designed like an ambulance.   The vehicle was a new addition to the police force under the Prime Minister’s Kaanoon Kaaryaanvayan Yojna. Even before the PMKKY vehicle reached the destination Mr Varma breathed his last.   He was a good citizen, however.   The residents of his Society will vouch for that if you care to ask them.   Like all good citizens, Mr Varma wanted to obey the government.   But he had no choice here. So he just wheezed and died. “The bugger died,” a constable reported to the off