Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Poetry is dead

Fiction Dr Pattabhiraman has had his usual overdose of his favourite Bacardi white rum. His weekend overdose begins on Friday evenings. Saturday and Sunday are days of leisureliness. Though the university is open on Saturdays, Dr Pattabhiraman has no classes on Saturdays. It is his day of research in the university library. His Saturday research usually ends in the manufacture of a thesis for some scholarly journal like The Indian Scholar and Asian Literary Review . On Friday evenings, however, he likes to take a long stroll into some deserted areas of the city. This evening he has reached Subhash Bose Botanical Garden. There is not a soul in sight. It is quite late in the night. Dr Pattabhiraman is haunted by Keats’s poetry and he recites a couple of lines from the Ode to a Nightingale . ‘ Now more than ever seems it rich to die ,’ the professor recites musically as he does in the lecture hall, ‘ To cease upon the midnight with no pain. ’ Just as he lifts the palm of h

The mystic is dead. The mystic is mad. He roams the streets in broad daylight with a lamp, his own lamp. His lamp has patina in its heart, He thinks people’s brains have patina. The mystic is mad, people say. Why am I like this? Why am I? Why am? Why? The mystic is mad, people decided. Autumn leaves consoled the mystic. Winter followed in due time. No one saves us but ourselves. The mystic decided. And he embraced the cross. And then there was none. No more.

Yet another rape victim is struggling for her life in a state ruled by a yogi. India has a central government and too many state governments whose sustaining force is religion. Yogis and sadhus as well as RSS ideologues are governing the nation. Yet the country is going through the worst phase in its history as far as crimes are concerned. When religion is used for committing crimes against a very large section of a country’s population, the result is a monstrous national entertainment. Crime has become the primary national entertainment in India. In a country, an enormous one at that, which provides little by way of life-enhancing entertainments, people will be delighted to have destructive entertainments. When the destruction is of enemies [perceived, albeit], the entertainment becomes intoxicating. India is intoxicated with destruction and elimination. I think it was Erich Fromm who said that destructiveness is an outcome of unlived life. Unlived life – that’s what we

General Takima is a minor character in Nobel laureate Pearl S Buck’s short story, The Enemy . It is one of the lessons prescribed in class 12 by CBSE. One of the questions that students often ask is whether Takima is a patriot at all since he is driven by self-centredness to let an enemy soldier escape. Recently a teacher-friend of mine raised the same question in slightly different words. For those who are not familiar with the story, here’s a brief summary. Dr Sadao, a Japanese doctor, is moved by sheer humanitarian consideration when Tom, a fugitive American prisoner of war, is washed ashore near his house. Dr Sadao not only treats him to the utter dismay of his servants but also helps him to escape in the end. General Takima refused to take action when the doctor had reported the soldier after he had recuperated totally. Why does General Takima fail to take action? Is it blatant selfishness because he is Dr Sadao’s patient and may require a surgery too? Dr Sadao is t

‘Can you teach a 55-year-old man to drive a car?’ I asked the woman who sat in the driving school’s office. That was four years ago. I had quit Delhi and taken up job in Kerala. Since Maggie and I worked in a residential school in Delhi which provided us with staff quarters on the campus, we had never thought of buying a car. For emergency, there was my ancient Bajaj Chetak.   ‘Why not?’ The woman gave me a broad smile. She was nearly as old as I was. ‘Recently a 60-year-old man got his license through us.’ Her son was the instructor and he succeeded in teaching me driving in a few weeks. I wasn’t quite confident in the beginning and even thought of giving up more than once.   My nights were haunted by spectres in the shapes of gear lever and other car parts. But learn I did. Eventually I bought a car and drove through the rugged terrains of surrounding villages just to reinforce the confidence that had found its way into my being. I am not a reluctant learner, however

Your eyes sparkled with love when you came My eyes longed for the sparkle But the sparkle was stolen long ago By gods. God, oh gods, Why have you forsaken me? Too many hues and colours you have And no heart. I have a heart.