Tomichan Matheikal's blog

“Specialization is for insects,” said Robert Anson Heinlein. A human being should be able to handle his/her children, prepare food, manage the society, work with a smartphone, and so on. Add as many things as you want to that list like fight occasional depression, stay clear of maniacs and fanatics and a whole lot of people, weed your garden, or whatever. When I was a student, a teacher of mine defined specialisation as studying more and more about less and less until you know everything about nothing. The teacher was a Ph.D. himself. Later on, as a post-graduate, when I wished to do Ph.D. I thought of the giggle of Salman Rushdie’s Satan in his Satanic Verses . No guide would accept a thesis about a hair in Satan’s tail, my friend dissuaded me. That friend had chosen to specialise on the role of Fate’s star in Thomas Hardy’s moral cosmos. He went on to become a Doctor of Philosophy who had specialised on the impact of Fate on Tess of the d’Urbervilles’ hymen. I went on to str

The last two books I ordered came as hardbound editions with prices slashed to half. I usually wait patiently for the economic paperback editions when books are published since I can’t afford to pay the hefty prices of hardbound editions. However, nowadays I keep getting hardbound editions at amazingly low prices. That’s fine. But the problem is that the hardbound books occupy too much space on the shelf and I’ll soon run out of that space. We live in a world of ebooks. I chose to publish my latest book as an ebook with no print version for many reasons, the first being a fear that it wouldn’t sell much in the print version. However, all the reviews I’ve got so far whether in public spaces or private have been very positive. Yet I don’t intend to bring out a print version. There are very few serious readers today. Mine is a serious book and a personal narrative too. If well-known writers can’t manage to sell their hardbound editions, what should I expect of my book? Tha

From The Economist ‘Post-truth’ is a relatively new phrase which means “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”. About three years ago, The Economist published an article which defined post-truth politics as the “art of the lie”. India has internalised the art of the lie. The country’s Prime Minister himself peddles lies and half-truths as it suits him. Yesterday he spoke very emotionally to a teeming crowd that Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura are killing BJP workers. There are clashes between politicians belonging to different parties in these states as in any other, no doubt. But the BJP workers are not particularly at risk of being attacked more than any other party men.   The PM knows how to foist half-truths and full lies on a nation that has become uncharacteristically credulous these days. The truth is that people belonging to minority communities

335 pages and over three weeks is quite uncharacteristic of me. It means the book didn’t appeal to me. Yet it’s a good novel, my heart tells me again and again. So I picked it up once more for a second reading before writing this post which is not really a review. How can you review a book unless it made you feel something in your heart? My attempt to give it a second reading floundered to a rather abrupt end when the book made me feel sleepy every time I picked it up. Yet I can guarantee that the book is good. A sexagenarian looks back at his life with much wistfulness and resignation. The loss of his mother when he was only nine years old redefined his life altogether. Later the father too abandoned him for a while. The mother ran away with a German when she realised that there was little in common between her and her husband. There was no connection between the mother and the son except some letters she wrote him initially. The mother vanishes from the boy’s conscious

It is sheer coincidence that three Muslims are being beaten up at Seoni in Madhya Pradesh when I run into Gandhi on the bank of the Sarayu at no other place than Ayodhya, the birthplace of Gandhi’s beloved deity. I thrust my phone into my pocket and stare at Bapu. He smiles at me. The smile is warped as if it is prised out forcefully from a heart that actually wants to weep. “The Sarayu is a river of sorrows,” he says as he gestures to me to sit down beside him on a step of the ghat. The river reeks of filth more than sorrow. But I decide to say nothing. I wish to listen to the Mahatma. Or just sit beside him feeling his silence within my being. “Hey, Ram!” He says softly with a sigh. I wish to ask him if Ram is there in the same place as Bapu, wherever that is. Do they meet and talk? What about others like Krishna and Jesus and Muhammad? Do they all live in the same place or have they divided that place on religious lines? I can’t bring myself to ask anything of the

“People use politics not just to advance their interests but also to define their identity,” said Samuel P. Huntington whose book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order drew worldwide attention at the turn of the millennium. Identity is a major issue which the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] has played with producing remarkable effects at the hustings during the last five years.   The identity bequeathed to India by Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi when the country liberated itself from the British was essentially a Western product founded on secularism and liberalism. The quintessential Indian outlook was – and still is, to a large extent – antithetical to secularism and liberalism. India’s countless gods and the rigidly hierarchical caste system were incompatible with Nehru’s rational agnosticism and Gandhi’s mystical inclusiveness. The later leaders who led the Congress Party lacked the profundity of both Nehru and Gandhi. Most of them succumbe

An extract from my latest book , Autumn Shadows: Memoir S awan had a lot of Sharmas among the staff in various positions. In my first year at the school, I took a team of debaters to Punjab Public School at Nabha in Punjab whose principal made a flippant remark about my school being also known as Sharma Public School. Though I thought the humour was a little out of place, it drew my attention to the many Sharmas in Sawan whom I had not even come to know until I returned from Punjab Public School. The Sharmas played a major role in Sawan. They had a peculiar penchant for tugging history to themselves. They shaped the history and the destiny of Sawan to a great extent. I should have considered myself fortunate to be invited into their company. But unfortunately my personal proclivity was to keep a safe distance from people if not run away from them altogether. Thus my probable opportunity to be a more significant part of Sawan’s history and destiny was lost though my palate le