Tomichan Matheikal's blog

A page from the play The Browning Version is a brilliant one act play by Terence Rattigan. A brief extract from it is incorporated in CBSE’s grade eleven English, though I have never understood why. The extract presents an interaction between a sly student Taplow and a young teacher Frank. Apart from some little games that people play in day-to-day life, the extract conveys nothing about the complex intricacies of human relationships which is what Rattigan’s play is about. The play is primarily about the incompatible relationship between Andrew Crocker-Harris and his wife Millie. Andrew is aware of his wife’s infidelity. Millie has her flings with other men, Frank being one of them. Frank is not aware of her other flings, however. Rather he assumes she is in genuine love with him. The play brilliantly portrays the complexities of human motives and behaviour. Andrew is a rigidly strict teacher who knows that he is not liked by his students who are in the 15-16 age grou

Vikram Seth tells a moving story about power versus culture in his poem ‘ The Frog and the Nightingale ’. The nightingale has the innate culture and the art of music. The frog has arrogated to himself the power over the area. The denizens hate the frog and love the nightingale. However, the nightingale is decimated soon by the contriving frog. The frog is not without culture, however. He is a self-proclaimed critic of music and a writer too. He knows how to project himself as a great personality. He knows how to rewrite history. He is the master of chicanery. Does that mean that power and culture are antithetical to each other as Arvind Passey seems to suggest at In[di]spire ? “Power and culture are in perennial conflict with each other,” his opening line says. No, I don’t agree. There were kings in the olden days and statesmen in the modern world who were great artists or promoters of art. But we have travelled a long distance from Jawaharlal Nehru to Narendra Modi, fr

Tomorrow my blog will clock half a million views. For me, it’s a significant achievement. It would not have been possible to make that achievement without you, dear reader. A big thank you from the depths of my heart.   The Readership Franz Kafka was a rare genius who did not wish his writings to be read by anyone. He let his friend Max Brod read them, though. Towards the end of his brief life (he died at the age of 40), he ordered Brod to destroy his works. Brod chose to disobey the last wish of his friend and so we have some of the finest novels like The Trial and The Castle . I have read both of them two times and may read them again. Kafka was a genius. I am a mediocre individual by any standards. Unlike Kafka, I love to be read. There was a time when appreciation meant almost everything to me. Now I have transcended that phase and it doesn’t matter even if no one appreciates me. Yet I would be sad if no one cared to read what I write. That’s why the numbers matte

Book Review   Quite a contrast! Let me start with a disclaimer. This is a book review and has nothing to do with the movie of the same name. I read a few reviews of the movie and each one trashes the movie as cheap propaganda for the right wing. The movie seems to be an attempt to denigrate Dr Manmohan Singh as well as the Congress Party, according to the reviews I read. The book, on the other hand, is a genuine attempt to understand Dr Singh as a person. The author, Sanjaya Baru, was Dr Singh’s media adviser during UPA-1. He had very close associations with the Prime Minister if the book is to be believed. When the book was published in 2014, the Congress Party was displeased with it for obvious reasons. Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi are shown to be manipulators who did not let Dr Singh wield any real power during his second reign as PM.   The Prime Minister’s Office released a press release then labelling the book as mere fiction. Baru carries conviction, however

All genuine writing is rooted in at least 3 things: 1.      the complex social reality which the writer is trying to understand and interpret; 2.      the literary tradition in the Eliotean sense; and 3.      the writer’s heart. The writer has to be constantly in touch with the world around him. Unless he understands that world, unless he is in constant touch with it, how can he write about it meaningfully? Good writers are sensitive people whose hearts are moved by what is happening around them. William Faulkner advised writers to “read, read, read”.   He asked them to “read everything: trash, classics, good and bad.” Absorb what you’re reading, then write. Without such moorings in the literary tradition, no one can be a good writer. The interpretation of the reality around comes from the writer’s heart, from his entire personality. Writing is the bleeding of the heart, as Hemingway suggested. Whatever has not been processed in the writer’s heart fails to car

Joan of Arc The lead article in the op-ed page of today’s Deepika (a Malayalam newspaper which is the mouthpiece of the Catholic Church in Kerala) is a slap in the face of a Catholic nun who dared to question the Church particularly on the Bishop Mulakkal case . The writer questions the nun’s virtues instead of looking at the evils she questioned. Many of the allegations made by the writer against the nun may be true. She might have broken her religious vows of poverty and obedience. But are her sins even comparable to what the Bishop did and what many priests of the Church have been doing for years and years? The nun can be questioned for her transgressions. My personal view is that she has no right to stay on in her religious congregation since she seems to have lost faith in its ways. She should quit her religious vocation and raise her finger against the Church, particularly because she seems to be going against the rules and regulations of that profession. That does n

I came across the following page from Hugh Prather’s Notes to Myself on a blogger friend’s Facebook wall. I had not heard of Hugh Prather until now. I liked the wisdom exuded by the page, however. I wondered whether I have reached that stage of holding my cat in my arms so it can sleep. My cat does love to sleep in my arms. I can also enjoy just lying on the rug picking up lint balls. I do it sometimes, in fact: just lie there, if not pick up lint balls since there are no lint balls to pick.   Comfortable with each other Is it just lethargy? I used to wonder. The wondering metamorphosed into self-probing and eventually I realised that I could just sit watching the colours of a croton feeling absolutely relaxed.   A croton in my little garden You reach a stage in life when nothing matters more than the peace you enjoy with yourself. There are no demands for anything. You are happy with whatever is. Things do go wrong at times but you know how to absorb tha