Tomichan Matheikal's blog

ABBA “ Chiquitita , tell me what's wrong /You're enchained by your own sorrow.”   Thus begins one of the songs that kept me bewitched for quite a while during my youth when I was passing through a tough time.   ABBA had sung it long before it crept into my veins like a soothing intoxication that ached my soul dully.   I was enchained by my own sorrow. Like Chiquitita, I was always sure of myself until the confidence was shattered by a deep disillusionment that broke me irreparably.   “You’ll be dancing once again,” ABBA sang to Chiquitita.   “Let me hear you sing once more like you did before / Sing a new song, Chiquitita.” I learnt to sing my new song.   That was my redemption. We have to learn to sing a new song after each heartbreak.   The world loves to break hearts.   That is the way of the world.   That is how it is.   The storm is far too mighty for the feeble wings of the gentle birds.   The tide in the ocean can wreck the steeliest of ships.   The

Image courtesy: Redorbit Bliss it was that Santiago experienced when he returned home with the skeleton of the huge marlin fish that he had caught with much difficulty after 84 days of bad luck.   Santiago is the eponymous old man in Hemingway’s classical novel, The Old Man and the Sea .   Bad luck haunted him like a vindictive demon for 84 days.   He couldn’t catch any fish.   But Santiago was not one to give up.   On the eighty-fifth day, he succeeds in hooking the huge marlin.   However, he could only bring home the skeleton of that fish as sharks attacked it incessantly all along the way back.   Santiago did what he could to fight the sharks.   He had dreamt of selling the fish at a high price.   He knew that the people who would eat the fish were unworthy of its greatness.   There was only the skeleton remaining by the time the old man reached ashore.   “But man is not made for defeat,” as Santiago tells us.   “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” Santiago’s

“Abracadabra,” says the wizard and the magic occurs.   We are all wizards, each one of us, capable of performing miracles in our lives.   The miracle is different from those that take place in fairy tales, as Mr Lamb says in Susan Hill’s story of Derry. Derry is an adolescent boy with an ugly scar on his face.   One side of his face is burnt by acid.   Derry thinks that the scar makes him repulsive to people.   Hence he keeps running away from people.   He does not like to look at himself in the mirror.   Unlike most adolescents, what he sees in the mirror is a repulsive image. Derry suffers from an extremely poor self-image because of his attitude towards the scar on his face.   He thinks that physical appearance matters a lot in social acceptance.   Mr Lamb tells him that he can give a magical kiss to himself and a miracle will happen. It is not like the fairy coming from nowhere and transforming the beast into a beauty with a kiss.   “You have to give the kiss to yo

Picture from LatinTimes ‘You’re so powerless, Pilate,’ Jesus thought as he stood in the praetorium.   The prefect of Caesar had washed his hands off his responsibility to uphold the truth.   ‘What is truth?’ he had asked. He did not wait for an answer.   Jesus was not going to answer him anyway.   He knew as well as Pilate that definitions were not what mattered to either of them.   ‘I am the truth,’ Jesus had said many times.   ‘You are the truth,’ he would have told Pilate, ‘if you wish to be.’   ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ The crowd outside the praetorium clamours louder and louder.   Being very religious, they have not entered the praetorium.   The praetorium is a pagan place and Yahweh’s chosen people should not enter pagan places on the Passover day lest they be defiled. The High Priests, Annas and Caiaphas, instigated the people by wielding their religious power.   Jesus had set the axe at the very root of their religion.   Their religion meant rubrics a

I realise that driving has lost its charm for me.   The last few days have me driving for over an hour from seven in the morning in order to reach the place where I have been assigned a job related to my regular work.   I reach back home at 6 in the evening driving the same route back.   There was a time when bike riding was a passion for me.   I loved to glide along the mountain tracks of Meghalaya just for the fun of it.   When I shifted to Delhi, riding ceased to be fun.   Delhi roads make people mad.   There are too many vehicles on the roads and all of them are in a hurry.   Many of them are plain crazy too.   I never enjoyed the rides in that crazy city of insane drivers and riders though I never became the target of any road rage which was ubiquitous on Delhi’s teeming roads.   I thought a car drive through the roads in Kerala flanked by lush greenery would be fun.   No way, as I learnt now.   You can never afford to look away from the windshield.   You don’t know

Image from Pinterest Like all adolescents, I too loved to stand in front of the mirror and admire myself.   As an adolescent, I thought I was the most handsome boy in the world.   Like most people, I outgrew that phase.   Mirror has now become redundant in my life.   Well, almost.   I still need it for trimming my grey beard. Selfies belong to adolescence, I think.   It is natural for adolescents to think that they are the centre of the universe, that everyone in the world is watching them and admiring them.   When adolescents put up their selfies in social media, there is nothing unnatural.   If people like me, whose autumn leaves have started dropping, are obsessed with selfies, then there is a problem.   I can’t even use my mobile phone to take a selfie properly. My hand will tremble and the phone will fall off most probably.   Even if it didn’t, I wouldn’t dare to take selfies.   I know that I am not the centre of the universe. I admire selfies sometimes.   But

No, I don’t want to walk with you, I’m sorry, I want to walk with the cloud up there, the dark, looming, vaporous mass. I can smile at you, laugh at your jokes, help you with the work, but that’s quite all. I want to walk with the cloud up there and become shapeless and massless and melt into a great sorrow that descends to dissolve into the dirt that I’ve smiled at and laughed at and helped create.