Tomichan Matheikal's blog

“Words fail me, Clio.   How did you track me down, did I leave bloodstains in the snow?” Whenever someone tells me to leave the past and live in the present, I am reminded of the above-quoted opening lines of John Banville’s novella, The Newton Letter .   The past will track you down even if you don’t leave bloodstains on the granite pavements you plodded on. The past can be a vindictive ghost especially if you haven’t managed to achieve something which the world of mediocre people perceive as success.   Mediocrity has a peculiar knack for sniffing bloodstains in snow. The solution is not trying to live in the present.   The solution is not erasing the past.   The solution is keeping the mediocre as far away from you as possible. The world belongs to the mediocre.   There is no real escape from them.   But you can keep a safe distance. If you have political power, you can erase the past.   You can create new history.   Heroes become villains and vice versa.   Crimi

One of the new nicknames I’ve earned on social media is ‘Rice bag’.   The Sanghis use that name for any South Indian who questions the Sangh views and outlooks.   I think so.   But when it comes to Sanghis it is impossible to say what exactly they mean by anything.   The most fundamental characteristic of a Sanghi is utter lack of humour as well as imagination. If you laugh when a Sanghi tells you that Ganesha’s trunk was the first case of plastic surgery in the history of medical science, the Sanghi will call you a Rice bag.   You can’t laugh when he thinks he is serious.   If you express an opinion that goes against the tenets and creeds of the Modified Sangh, the Sanghi will call you a Rice bag.   You may wonder what rice or bag has got to do with all these?   Nothing. It is only the Sanghi way of telling you that they have no imagination to call you anything else other than by the place you belong to, or the food you eat, or the dress you wear.   I become a Rice b

Melancholy lies like a deep ocean In the nebulous gaze of your eyes. No grand waves, only bland ripples, Constantly moving like an eternal dancer, Graceful, gentle, seductive, And intimidating at once. I have sailed in that ocean On a raft floating on the ripples. I longed to plumb the depths, But the fathomlessness withheld me. I wish I had the recklessness To dive into the briny deeps. The last time we met I saw myself lying on the waters Like a phantasmagoric shadow.

4 March 1966.   John Lennon, the legendary singer, achieved a fame that he did not savour.   The London Evening Standard reported that day a remark of Lennon’s: “Christianity will go.   It will vanish and shrink…. We’re more popular than Jesus now.”   An American magazine for the young people picked up that remark and condensed it into a headline: “We’re more popular than Jesus.” John Lennon claimed to be bigger than Jesus.   The news spread like wildfire and the Americans went into a frenzy.   Some fanatics declared Lennon a blasphemer and vowed “eternal’ ban on all Beatles music, past, present and future. People were appointed at 14 pickup points to collect Beatle records and anything associated with the music troupe.   The records were burnt. “I’m not anti-God, anti-Christ or anti-religion,” Lennon explained in what was projected as an apology.   “I was not saying we are greater or better. I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I’m sorr

A few of my students One of the best things I love about my profession, teaching, is the abundance of smiles in my life.   From the time I enter the campus in the morning till I leave in the evening, I receive hundreds of innocent smiles.   The very sight of students brings smiles to my lips and they are always reciprocated.   The world is beautiful when people smile. The adult world is different.   I have noticed that adults rarely reciprocate smiles.   Probably they have their own pains and worries which suppress the smiles even if they might want to smile.   I too have my pains and worries.   But I choose to smile simply because I know that the smiles bring me joy. Once when a student ceased to smile at me because I gave her less marks in a test than she thought she deserved, I felt hurt.   It took me three days and pretty much explanation to put the smile back on her lips.   But the efforts were worth.   A smile means so much to me. Every smile is a beautiful f

One of my Holi memories from Delhi Holi passed without holiday, without colours, without pollution. My relief knows no bounds.   Holi is one of the festivals I dreaded when I lived in Delhi. It meant breathlessness after people leave you having dumped as much filth on your body as possible.   The other was Diwali.   It meant dumping filth into the air.   Again, I was left breathless.   Asthalin inhaler and Otrivin nasal drops saved me on both occasions. I would have loved to enjoy both the festivals from a safe distance.   If people want to throw whatever they want on other people and call it festivals, it is their business.   Who am I to question that?   But the problem is that they insisted on throwing at least some of that on me.   Even if I sat at home with my door bolted they would come ringing the bell.   “I am allergic,” I would plead.   “Only a little bit,” they would claim.   Everyone throws a little bit of their love in the form of some powder or liquid or fi

If you are a cynic, you find life amusing most of the time.   Cynics have the unique knack for looking around for a coffin when they smell flowers.   I live in Kerala where cynicism is cultivated as a highly sophisticated form of art.   At dinner time the Malayalam news channels will bring you, without exception, the most cynical commentaries on the day’s events.   Kerala has probably the highest number of trolls on the various social media.   It is good that people like Narendra Modi and Amit Shah do not know Malayalam; otherwise the cynical TV programmes and the media trolls would have given them multiple sclerosis long ago.   Grihalakshmi Cover The latest target of such cynicism in Kerala is a Malayalam magazine, Grihalakshmi , which gave the photo of a breastfeeding woman on its cover with the caption: Mothers tell Kerala: Don’t stare, we want to breastfeed (our babies). The woman in the picture is Gilu Joseph, who is a model, writer, actor and poet. Her views are pr