Tomichan Matheikal's blog

  My early morning visitor today Half a year is a pretty long period in the autumn of one’s life. Covid has consumed as much as that at a time when I was contemplating certain substantial changes in my lifestyle. I wanted to do some travelling first of all, some long-distance drives on weekends along with Maggie. That was meant to be my way of making the imminent retirement a smooth transition from the classroom to the cosmos. Ironically, my cosmos shrank to my table with a laptop and the current book. Ironies are inescapable companions throughout life. Blogchatter’s A2Z Challenge kept me blissfully engaged in April and the exercise ended in the creation of a book about books: Great Books for Great Thoughts . This volume is available absolutely free; just a click on the given link is all that it costs you. Online classes have provided me the only meaningful contact with the world from May onwards. The alarming spread of the pandemic prompted me to look at the meaning of suffering

  One of the most delightful essays of George Orwell is ‘ Why I Write ’ which I read as a young student of a creative writing course of IGNOU. With ruthless candidness Orwell identifies “sheer egoism” as the first reason for his writing. “Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc…” Orwell goes on to say that “It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one.” I embrace Orwell wholeheartedly here. I am an inveterate egoist in the above Orwellian sense, every bit of it including those grown-ups, and that egoism probably remains at the top of my list too if you hurl on my face the question why I write. But that can’t be the sole reason for any worthwhile writer. Orwell has listed a few more of them in his essay and I won’t ever dare to dispute any of them. Political purpose is mentioned as the last point by Orwell. He defines it as “Desire to push the world in a certain d

  Every people love to belong to the winning side. Victory has more intoxications than religion. In fact, religion has been used more for achieving earthly conquests than for attaining spiritual bliss. In Ayodhya’s Ram Mandir, PM Modi is offering the nation (all the 130 crore people, in his own words) both intoxications: earthly and heavenly. How? Earthly Conquest The Ram Mandir is a symbol of the majority community’s triumph over the minorities and secularists and liberals – all the antinationals, in the new lingo. See, we have the power to bring down your god and his mosque – however historical the mosque may be – and put our own god there in a splendid temple and that too when the country is struggling with a pandemic and concomitant numerous other crises. That is the message from Ayodhya now. This country is not yours anymore; it is unarguably ours, one particular community’s. We are the victors and you are the vanquished. No one wants to be on the side of the vanquished. S

One of my friends in the village narrated an interesting anecdote. He heard a villager pray to his god one day for a strong wind in the night so that one of the trees in his neighbour’s farm would fall. “That would give me firewood for a month,” the villager explained when questioned. His neighbour is a very kind man who lets him take firewood whenever dry branches of trees fall in the farm. “But why don’t you ask your god to solve your problem without wishing harm for your kind neighbour?” My friend questioned the villager who knew the neighbour too. The villager said, “That’s true. I never thought of that.” The villager was quite innocent. He really didn’t mean harm to his neighbour whom he held in high regard. But his firewood was running out and winds were quite common in the area and the winds brought down branches of trees frequently. It was only fair to ask god to send a wind in the nearest farm. It would be easier to carry the firewood home from the nearest f

Ayodhya Temple, national pride? In a few hours from now Prime Minister Modi will lay a 40 kg silver brick in Ayodhya to mark the beginning of the construction of a humungous temple. India is grappling with a deadly pandemic like most countries in the world. India is the fifth worst affected country and given the country’s enormous population any sane leader would think of spending revenue on providing better medical facilities. But Modi knows how to earn his place in recorded history: architecture. He spent an incredibly large sum on a statue that stands 600 feet tall on lands that belonged to 185 families. Mr Modi seems to think that the statue will give a stiff competition to the Taj Mahal. If not the statue, this temple in Ayodhya should give that competition. There’s more in the offing too: Central Vista in Delhi. Mr Modi can surely hope to get his name imprinted in history as THE ARCHITECT of endemic India in pandemic times . The Ayodhya temple has much emotive po

Krishna Hari is a class 12 student. She writes stunning poems which carry evocative images and provoking metaphors. As her English teacher, I am proud to feature one of her poems in this space.  Krishna Hari The old birds in my yard⠀ Fly away to distant lands⠀ For deceptive summer eves have come⠀ Yet again with their wild rains⠀ And malicious clouds.⠀ ⠀ I sit on my balcony cross-legged⠀ Sipping warm whiskey⠀ Watching the sunset paint ⠀ The northern skies sepia.⠀ ⠀ I hear the rustling leaves of the devil's trees⠀ Within the premises of that old temple by the lake⠀ Where women used to worship serpents and fairies once⠀ Collapsed into a rubble of stones with time.⠀ ⠀ Eerie questions suck on the abysses Under my skin like leeches⠀ And I feel as if I'm⠀ On the edge of an apocalypse.⠀ ⠀ I ask, "Who makes leaves fall in autumn"?⠀ "Why were thorny roses prettier than tranquil jasmines"?⠀ "Where do old birds go to die ?⠀ Do they ever cry for their wrinkled dest

Fall is an integral part of human life. There is the natural season of fall (autumn) and there are the human falls of errors and misfortunes. There is also the sweet falling in love. Falling out of love is also a part of life. A Fallen Leaf is an anthology of 15 short stories written by 15 different writers but blend together coherently like the warp and woof of an elegant fabric. These stories revolve around the various falls in human lives.   All the stories are written in the conventional method of plot development. There is a problem which grows complex towards a denouement and the final resolution. Sharanya Mishra’s ‘A Mosaic on the Garden Floor’ is an exception insofar as it melds a couple of subplots and builds up a mosaic instead of a single picture. Each story has its own conventional lesson to teach too. Even Olinda Braganza’s ‘A Tryst with a Twist’ which has the trappings of science fiction ends with a blushing hint of a moral lesson. In short, here are 15 stories that