Tomichan Matheikal's blog

"There is a hero in every villain and there is a villain in every hero."  വില്ലൻ എന്ന പുതിയ സിനിമയുടെ സാരോപദേശം അതാണ്.  സിനിമയുടെ ഒടുവിൽ ആവർത്തിച്ചാവർത്തിച്ചു നമ്മെ പഠിപ്പിക്കാൻ വേണ്ടി മാത്രം ഉണ്ടാക്കിയ ഒരു ഡയലോഗ് ആണത്.  കാണികളെ എന്തൊക്കെയോ പഠിപ്പിക്കാൻ വേണ്ടി മാത്രം ഉണ്ടാക്കിയ ഒരു സിനിമയാണ് മോഹൻ ലാലിന്റെ വില്ലൻ എന്ന് തോന്നിപ്പോയി അത് കണ്ടുകൊണ്ടിരുന്നപ്പോൾ. New Gen movieയും ക്‌ളാസിക്കൽ സിനിമയും ഇണ ചേരുന്ന ഒരു പ്രതീതിയാണ് ഈ സിനിമ കണ്ടപ്പോൾ എനിക്കുണ്ടായത്. തമിഴും ഹിന്ദിയും ഇന്ഗ്ലീഷും ഒക്കെ മലയാളവുമായി ഇണ ചേർന്ന്, വില്ലനും ഹീറോയും ഇണ ചേർന്ന്, New Genഉം ക്ലസ്സിസിസവും ഇണ ചേർന്ന്, ഒരുപാട് പഴകിയ പ്രതികാര ഇതിവൃത്തം പുനരാവിഷ്‌ക്കരിക്കുകയാണ് മോഹൻ ലാലിന്റെ വില്ലൻ. കാണികളുടെ ഭാവനയെ ഈ സിനിമ ഒരിടത്തും തൊടുന്നില്ല എന്നതാണ് പ്രശനം. ആരോ കൊണ്ടുവന്നേൽപിച്ച ഒരു boring jigsaw puzzle കൂട്ടിവയ്ക്കാൻ ശ്രമിക്കുന്ന ആളിന്റെ വികാരമാണ് കാണിക്ക് ഈ സിനിമ കണ്ടുകൊണ്ടിരിക്കുമ്പോൾ ഉണ്ടാകുക. ഇത്രയൂം cliched ഡയലോഗ് ഞാൻ അടുത്ത കാലത്ത് ഒരു സിനിമയിലോ പുസ്‌തകത്തിലോ സഹിക്കേണ്ടി വന്നിട്ടില്ല എന്നത് എന്റെ സ്വക

I can relish a chicken biryani or a KFC salver when I am hungry enough.  But nothing entices me as much as a good vegetarian spread.  Vegetarian food is like a gentle breeze that tickles your entrails as it moves on to enliven your soul while its meaty counterparts are like a whirlwind that shakes up your neurons into a wild frenzy.  Frenzy is a welcome relief once in a while. Given a choice, I would opt for the leaves, roots and grains rather than the flesh and tissues.  But I am not at all fussy when it comes to food which I require in a small quantity.  Moreover, some of the finest human beings I have come across are omnivorous people.  The so-called “pure vegetarians” were sheer boors in my personal experience.  They have unwarranted feelings of superiority and tend to impose their views on others.  Most of the compassionate people I have come across in my personal life are all omnivorous.  All the people with whom I enjoyed convivial moments over a drink, while in Delhi, w

St Rita of Casia: Patron of abused wives and widows I grew up hearing stories about Jesus and his saints.  They were usually fantastic exaggerations like Saint Francis talking to birds or Saint George saving an innocent girl from a monstrous dragon.  So when I read about Saint Rita of Casia in Marquez’s autobiography, Living to Tell the Tale , I burst into laughter.  Marquez says that his mother used to narrate the story to the children. Rita of Casia had an alcoholic husband.  He returned home one night maddened by alcohol.  Rita’s hen had just left her droppings on the dining table.  Rita didn’t get the time to clean the immaculate tablecloth as the husband staggered in.  She managed to place an inverted plate over the hen’s droppings before asking her drunk husband, “What would you like to eat?” The man growled, “Shit.” Rita just lifted the plate and said with her saintly sweetness, “Here you are.” The husband was amazed by the miracle.  He was convinced by his

I love the scent of smouldering incense sticks.  At some indeterminate point of time, quite many years back, I started keeping incense sticks in my living room.  I cannot recall what prompted me to do it.  But it became a habit, almost a ritual.  I fell in love with the scent.  The habit continues to this day when I’m living in Kerala where windows are normally kept open and fresh, uncontaminated, arboreal air circulates in the rooms. The habit was born while I lived in Delhi where windows were practically useless except for sticking up water-based coolers in scorching summer.  Windows remain closed in Delhi irrespective of the season.  Delhi air is dense with exhaust fumes and suffocating dust.  Delhiites breathe the same air that they exhale when they are inside their house unless it is air-conditioned.  Air-conditioners are for the bosses and the affluent.  Some of the others like me purified the air in their rooms with smouldering incense sticks.  A friend from Kerala who

Nostalgia wipes away bad memories and magnifies good ones , says Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his autobiography, Living to Tell the Tale .  [I have modified his words a little and hence no quotation marks.]  Now I know why I have no nostalgias.  It’s very amusing when I come to think about it.  I lived in quite a few places in South India, and then in Shillong and Delhi.  I lived with all sorts of people in these places, people belonging to different religions, castes, tribes, and cultures.  These places and people have given me a lot of memories but no nostalgia whatever.   There were so many funny people who provided a whole lot of entertainment to me all along the way.  However, those experiences become entertainment only when I look back from the distance of today.  Standing on “a heap of broken images” of an Eliotean Waste Land, I have little to long for from those days which are lost permanently (and mercifully?) anyway.    My fears and desires, joys and sorrows were

My wife and the Taj - Romance in 2011 “The Taj Mahal rises above the banks of the river like a solitary tear suspended on the cheek of time,” wrote Rabindranath Tagore.  The amazing monument has stirred the imagination of many poets, novelists as well as simple travellers like me.  The very image of the Taj conjures up a melange of feelings and fantasies in me.  I have visited it twice and would love to visit many more times if people like Sangeet Som don’t bring it down before I go down.  I have no great regard for Shahjahan.  He appears as a villain in one of my stories .  His wife, Mumtaz Mahal, for whom the white marble monument was constructed, was not monumentally great either.  But the Taj Mahal – that’s a marvel, a poem, a romance, a dream, a fantasy.  No, Sangeet Som, I can’t agree an iota with you.  You are a rioter and hence cannot appreciate poetry and romance.  Your heart is filled with black hatred. I feel sorry for you. Around the time the Taj was constru

“All artists are crazy.  That’s the best thing about them…. ‘ No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness!’  Do you know who said that?  Aristotle, that’s who .”  One of the characters in Irving Stone’s novel, Lust for Life , makes that observation. Lust for Life is a fictionalised version of Vincent van Gogh’s life.  Van Gogh was as insane as – if not more so than – his contemporary artists like Paul Gaugin.  Van Gogh was so abnormal that women thought him despicable.  None of his family members, except his brother Theo, could bring themselves to like him. All genuine artists including creative writers possess a degree of insanity.  Normal people follow the norms made by the society.  Normal people believe that life is all about eating, copulating, and conquering.  The horrendous ugliness of that normal existence is what triggers the artist.  The artist is in search of something beyond food, sex and wealth.  That is his insanity. The normal person knows that t