Tomichan Matheikal's blog

A popular goddess in India Fire chose to dance in my front yard on Sunday. The sky grew ominously dark in the late afternoon making it look like night. Then came a thundershower. The heavens rumbled furiously. The lightning turned into a dance of fires and the accompanying thunder deafened our ears. Maggie and I were watching it from inside our house. When the orgy of the heavens relented, I stepped out to take stock of the damage. A few of the tiles outside the house lay shattered to smithereens. The fury of the lightning had dug two deep holes in the wall. A flowerpot lay broken and the schefflera in it was thrown aside. Soon I would discover that the damage was much more than all that. Quite a few of my electric appliances were damaged irreparably. I took leave from school on Monday in order to bring a semblance of normalcy to my home. I learnt that a few houses of my neighbourhood were similarly affected by the disaster. Then came people’s reactions and comments. Most

Diwali in 2008 at the staff quarters of Sawan Public School, Delhi I don’t celebrate festivals now. I never celebrated them after I lost my childhood. Onam and Christmas were my favourite childhood festivals. Both were colourful and joyful. Onam called my attention to the variety of flora available in my village. Children used to come to pluck flowers from our land in order to make the floral carpet for Maveli. It is then I became aware of the very existence of some of those flowers. The cutest attraction of Christmas was the crib we made at home. Father led the exercise. The children’s duty was to collect the raw materials from the farm. We collected palm leaves and a particular variety of grass that grew abundantly in December. This grass was called Infant Jesus grass ( ഉണ്ണീശോ പുല്ല്). Then there were the stars and illumination. Today both Onam and Christmas have lost their innocence. Flowers are bought from the market. Cribs are readymade. When I lived in Delhi (un

Fiction Image from Amazon ‘I often feel I’m an ant,’ Samuel said. ‘An ant?’ Meenakshi frowned in spite of herself. As a psychiatrist she had trained herself to accept any fancy, however farfetched, from a client without any visible reaction. ‘The ant climbs up a tree and moves to the end of a branch,’ Samuel continued. ‘It creeps on and on until it reaches the last leaf of the branch, the most jutting-out leaf.’ ‘Then?’ Meenakshi was genuinely interested now. ‘It reaches the tip of the blade,’ Samuel stopped. Meenakshi could sense the angst that throbbed in his vocal cords. She kept looking intently into his eyes. ‘It bites the edge of the blade tightly with its jaws and hangs there. Hangs, not sits.’ ‘What is it doing there? Just hanging?’ Meenakshi wondered. ‘Waiting.’ ‘Waiting for what?’ ‘For a passing crow.’ ‘Why?’ ‘To be eaten by the crow.’ Samuel was passing through acute depression. He was a lecturer of English at St Edmund’s college. He was 35 t

Watching the recently released Malayalam movie, Jallikattu , was a painful experience much as the movie was hilarious. The film has nothing to do with the savage entertainment by the same name indulged in by some people in Tamil Nadu. The film is about the savagery that lies deep inside the human heart. Man is a beast, far more evil than the wildest beast in the forest. The movie tears apart the facade of sophistication that we have put up to conceal our intrinsic savagery. A buffalo escapes from the butcher's sledge hammer and runs amok. How the people of the village react to the situation is what the movie is all about. Violence reeks right from the beginning to the last scene. The killing of a buffalo by a butcher who cuts up the flesh into lumps that are suspended on hooks in the meat shop is the revolting scene that ushers you into the terrifying and simultaneously hilarious darkness that follows. Soon you are made to realise that the darkness actually lies within you

Kittu established his place at home too soon The great philosopher Immanuel Kant said, "We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals." I was seldom overwhelmed by love for animals. At best I would admire them from a distance. I loved watching certain animals for their ferocity and majesty. My heart would resonate with William Blake's admiration for the "fearful symmetry" of the tiger. I have often wondered with Blake whether the same creator made both the lamb and the tiger. But I could never bring myself to domesticate any animal. I never dreamt of keeping animal pets.  Nevertheless, a cat whom I named Kittu walked into my heart two years ago. He had been abandoned on the roadside near my house by someone who obviously had not cultivated the sensibility that the great philosopher suggested. Even before I realised what was happening, I fell in love with Kittu. When I had to be away from home overnight, I worried about Kittu's well-being

Kittu in the sit-out Maggie and I feel sad when Kittu, our cat,  is not at home to welcome us as we return home after the day's work. Most evenings he's there. He escorts us from the car to the door and enters ahead of us. It's his home. He belongs there. We like it that way. What makes home really beautiful is someone waiting there for us. What makes any place beautiful is someone waiting there for us. There was a little girl of UKG who waited for Maggie and me at the door of her classroom in the morning as we walked from the parking lot to the office. She would greet us with a smile and beam with joy as we patted her cheek. Occasionally she would beckon Maggie to bend so that she could plant kiss on Maggie's cheek. When the year ended and her classroom changed, she disappeared from our routine way. I wished she was still there. I'm sure Maggie did too. Some people create a tender space for themselves in our hearts. Some disappear after that, they grow

Leonardo da Vinci Image from rfi Leonardo da Vinci was an illegitimate child. However, his father was considerate enough to let him grow up in the Vinci mansion though he was not entitled to get any formal education. He had minimal schooling. His boyhood was spent on the Vinci estate and surrounding landscapes watching birds and animals, cliffs and waterfalls. One day the little Leonardo grabbed some sheets of paper (not easily available in those days) from his father’s office in order to sketch the beautiful things he saw around. He had no teachers, no paintings to learn from; he was his own master. Eventually his talent came to the attention of his father. Leonardo was sent at the age of 14 to be an apprentice of the Florentine artist Andrea del Verrocchio. Verrocchio taught much more than art to his disciples. Leonardo too learnt engineering, mechanics, chemistry and metallurgy from the master. In 1481, at the age of 29, Leonardo was a master himself. The Pope was loo