Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Fiction Her client was pulling up his trousers when Eunuch Kishan called her from just outside the door. “Maithili, oh, you Maithili!”   The eunuch’s voice sounded uncharacteristically frantic.   He was a formidable creature.   Kishan was the watchdog of the brothel, protector of the harlots, and the bringer of both good and bad tidings.   His voice usually resounded menacingly in the musty corridors of the brothel.   Now it sounded subdued, musty. Maithili opened the door and showed the client out while looking askance at Kishan. “Your father is gone,” he said without any ado. “Gone?” Maithili repeated the word as she took in the news.   Kishan explained to her briefly that her father was lynched by a mob that called themselves gau rakshaks.   Gau rakshak was a new addition to the country’s lingo.   Maithili remembered as she changed her dress to go to her house in the village where her people would be waiting for the money she would bring for burying

In the summer of 2010, my wife and I decided to celebrate the fifteen years of our life together by going on a trip.   We chose Gangtok and Darjeeling as our destination.   “So mutually opposed places,” my wife would say later, “one is like a cheerful sunrise and the other like a gloomy sunset.” Maggie with the tigers in Darjeeling museum Her metaphor for Darjeeling could not have been more apt.   Whoever we met there looked quite sullen though a few of them pretended to smile.   The Gorkhaland movement had eaten into their hearts like a corrosive cancer.   I imagine the place must be in much worse condition today in spite of the change in government.   It will be still worse in a few years from now when the BJP will take charge in Bengal and impose its dictatorship on the agitating Gorkhas. We reached Darjeeling in a gloomy evening after an unforgettable journey from Gangtok and checked into a hotel which was eager to sell us the next morning’s sunrise.   The peopl

One of the easiest things we can do is to masquerade hatred as love.   Most of the present day patriots (or nationalists, as they consider themselves) are motivated by hatred though they think that it is love of their nation that guides them.   It is the hatred of a particular section of people that really motivates these patriots. Hence the violence that underlies the patriotism. If you genuinely love your country, you will find ways of promoting its welfare.   Love is not destructive.   Love does not kill.   Cruelty is cruelty even if you bring in gods and scriptures to justify it.   In the olden days religious people sacrificed animals to appease gods.   That was cruelty to animals though not perceived as such by worshippers.   Today’s religious people sacrifice human beings belonging to other creeds in order to appease gods.   Whether gods are appeased or not, one can eliminate enemies with the contentment of a devout worshipper when religion is invoked to sanction cr