Tomichan Matheikal's blog

It is impossible to summarise Dostoevsky’s magnum opus, The Karamazov Brothers , in a few paragraphs. As the title indicates, it is the story of the three Karamazov brothers: Dmitry, Ivan and Alyosha, in descending order of seniority, though Ivan plays the major role. Their father, Fyodor, is a lustful hedonist who loves only himself. He has one more son born out of the wedlock, Smerdyakov, a malicious character who ends up killing himself after killing his father. However, it is Dmitry who is accused of parricide and Ivan walks into the court and claims to be the murderer. Dmitry is a man of the flesh, Ivan of the mind, and Alyosha of the spirit, in short. The novel is about the conflict among these. The body loves the world’s indulgences. The mind wants logic and reason. The spirit craves to transcend all these. Fyodor Karamazov’s murder brings out the dominant traits of his sons. Evil is one of the dominant themes of the novel. Evil is a theme that has baffled philoso

Fate plays a dominant role in Thomas Hardy’s world. However much you may try to get on, fate can come like a brutal monster and crush you mercilessly just when everything seems to be going well. In his last novel, Jude the Obscure , Hardy passed the blame to society; your society can cripple you as well as your destiny. Jude is an orphan boy raised by an aunt. He grows up and becomes a stonemason but has higher aspirations. He wants to study and improve the standard of his life. But the country girl, Arabella, seduces him and tricks him into marriage. Arabella is also someone who wants to improve the standard of her living and when she gets a chance to go to Australia she leaves Jude. Jude goes to Christminster [Hardy’s fictional version of Oxford] to pursue his ambition. Jude meets cousin Sue in Christminster and helps her find a job at Richard Phillotson’s residence. Phillotson was a schoolmaster in Jude’s birthplace. His academic aspirations had brought him to Christm

What will happen if God incarnates as a man and starts living with us? Of course, we will kill him and then worship him. Gods cannot be easy to live with though they may be great if kept at a safe distance. Richard Bach’s 1977 novel, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah is about God’s incarnation in contemporary America. Donald Shimoda is God’s name. Both Donald the messiah and Richard the narrator are engaged in the same profession of flying people in their small planes for a fare. Donald resigned as the messiah with God’s permission. Unlike the Biblical God who demanded the Christ’s crucifixion, Donald’s God tells him to do whatever he likes. “Not my will, but thine be done for what is thy will is mine for thee,” the voice on the hilltop tells Donald. “Go thy way as other men, and be thou happy on the earth.” Thus Donald takes up the job of flying people. But you can’t hide your real self for too long. It becomes clear to people that Donald is not just ano

“You live in a dream world – a haze of poetry and fuzzy ideas about revolution.   To build something is not the same thing as dreaming of it: building is always a matter of well-chosen compromises.”   One of the themes of Amitav Ghosh’s novel, The Hungry Tide , is the futility of effete idealism and the inevitable need for compromises.    Nirmal Bose is the effete idealist to whom his wife, Nilima, speaks the above words.    A brief detention by the police for participating in the 1948 conference of Socialist International unsettled Nirmal so much that he could not continue his job as English lecturer in a Calcutta college anymore.   His physical condition deteriorated so much that his doctors advised a life outside the city.   The couple chose Sunderbans where Nirmal took up job as the headmaster of a school in Lusibari, one of the islands.   Nilima founded a Trust which built up a hospital for the people of the islands. Romantic dreamers like Nirmal will never be happy

The world is now going through a severe crisis caused by the corona virus disease. Different people and nations deal with the crisis in their own ways. The way you deal with a crisis reflects your character. America went through a severe national crisis in 1930s. There was the Dust Bowl tragedy which damaged the ecology and agriculture of the great prairies. Then there was the severe economic depression. John Steinbeck’s novel, The Grapes of Wrath , is set in the background of the dust bowl tragedy and the great depression. The Joad family is one of the many that moves out from Oklahoma to California in search of livelihood following the dust bowl tragedy that rendered their lands useless for cultivation. Highway 66 is overcrowded with migrants moving to a place where there will be 20,000 people waiting to secure the 800 available jobs in one Californian orchard alone. There are thousands more like them looking for livelihoods. Many of these migrants die on the way. Many

All Indians should read this book for various reasons. First of all, it is a vivid and well-written account of India’s liberation from the British, the dramas and the agonies that accompanied the liberation, and a close look at some of our freedom fighters and other leaders of the time. Secondly, it shows how history can be made interesting to read unlike the tedious stuff we are usually made to study in schools. Thirdly, it is a look at India of that time through the eyes of two persons from the West: an American and a Frenchman. Fourthly, the present generation whose views on historical figures like Gandhi and Nehru are being distorted through wilful propaganda need to be aware of the truths beneath the propaganda. Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins wrote the book after an exhaustive research that lasted four years and gathered 800 kilograms of documents. Their research began with none less than Lord Mountbatten himself whom they met at his residence in London in 1970. M

The distinction between two countries, say like India and Pakistan, is not the distinction between good and bad. It is the distinction between pink lotus flowers and white jasmine flowers: just a difference. “The difference between the wild boar and the wild bear,” as Egbert would say. Egbert is the protagonist of D H Lawrence’s short story (a rather long one, in fact), England, My England . Egbert is a man of raw passion. He has a primeval spirit which loves the countryside with its “tufts of flowers, purple and white columbines, and great Oriental red poppies…” and patches of savage areas too like the “marshy, snake-infested places.” He is delighted to marry Winifred who is not only “young and beautiful and strong with life, like a flame in sunshine” but also has a timbered cottage in Hampshire gifted by her father, Godfrey Marshall.   Egbert makes passionate love with Winifred who “seemed to come out of the old England, ruddy, strong, with a certain crude, passionate qu