Tomichan Matheikal's blog

 Fiction Ramakrishnan wanted to retire. “50 years is not the age for sannyasa,” said Saroja, his wife indignantly. She had been noticing some weird changes of late in her husband’s lifestyle. Ramakrishnan was the Managing Director of a major wing of a renowned corporate enterprise whose ostensible objective was to buy up the whole of India – from footwear manufacture to nuclear weapons manufacture. Yet he was becoming increasingly discontented over the past few weeks, Saroja had noticed. “What will you do anyway after throwing away the job?” Saroja asked her husband who was sitting on the plush velvet sofa looking like a unique specimen of borderline mental retardation. “I’ll go to a cave in Badrinath and become a fulltime monk,” Ramakrishnan said. Saroja snickered. “Fulltime is any time better than the part-time monking that our PM, your boss’s thickest friend, did once.” That landed like a boxer’s punch on Ramakrishnan’s cheek. Back then, when the PM spent a few hours in a

From Deccan Herald   What India now has is an extortionist government. It raises the prices of everything on a daily basis. Petrol and diesel prices are just conspicuous examples. Today the price of cooking gas went up yet again. Do you know how many times the price of gas has been increased in the month of February alone? Probably, you don't. We have stopped thinking about price rises. We have got used to the mounting prices. Maybe, we have accepted the rising prices as the cost to be paid for keeping Narendra Modi as our PM. Maybe, this is what patriotism means:  attaining multiple orgasms while  being screwed wholesale by your government.  What are we to Mr Narendra Modi? Are we citizens or subjects?  In the olden days there were kings and subjects. Not citizens. We have been taken back to those old days by Mr Modi. Of course, he is in love with old days. He spoke to us no end about the greatness of the old days. Now we are there: king and subjects. No more citizens of a democra

  Wherever I turn, traitors everywhere. I love my country and its five-thousand-year-old civilisation. Patriotism runs in my veins like the holy waters of Ganga mayya.   But I see traitors all around me. Millions of farmers who question the wisdom of the infallible government. Scores of activists conspiring against the infallibility, from Bhima Koregaon to Disha Ravi.   We’ll fill our jails with you traitors. You’ll vanish from our public places without a trace.   This is the land of the pure. The is the holy land of gods and their avatars. Your mission is to sing paeans to this Punyabhumi, your Pitrubhumi And endure little hardships for its sake.   Don’t be a traitor questioning the government of the Punyabhumi, your Pitrubhumi. Endure the pain whether it be in your neck or in your posterior so that we shall have a Narendra Modi stadium in every state of this Punyabhumi, your Pitrubhumi. Your children can play cricket tomorrow

A cartonful of medicines and medical accessories were being placed into my hands by the dispenser at the hospital where a beloved person had just undergone an angiogram when my phone rang. 'Benoy is no more,' the voice said stifling a sob. Benoy was a friend who was my batchmate from 1975 to 1978. The friendship endured till his ultimate departure because he had a unique ability to retain friendships. He took extraordinary pains to collect the whereabouts of each member of that particular batch and organise a gathering of theirs in Kochi about a decade back. He made a data bank of each one's significant dates such as birthday, wedding, and spouse's birthday. He wished each one on those occasions at the WhatsApp group he formed. Every friend was special for him. 'I won't leave you,' he told me when I left the WhatsApp group which I found a bit obscurantist in outlooks. But I was adamant on leaving the group with which I couldn't identify myself. Moreover,

  Courtesy TheConversation.com Though my country is obsessed with memories, I am not fond of them. It’s beyond my comprehension why my country loves to dig up the ghosts of Babur and Aurangzeb, people buried centuries ago. It looks like my country is getting tired of digging far into history because of late young girls seem to be the targets. Girls in their early 20s seem to be the most favourite. Middle-aged journalists and activists were the focus some time back. Well, tastes vary as time changes, I guess. Back to memories which is my concern this morning because an old friend of mine called me “bastard” yesterday when I refused to respond to his seemingly endless messages. This friend – let’s call him Harry as in Tom, Dick, and Harry – has been trying to renew a lost friendship for a while now. We had said goodbye to each other in 2001 standing on shifting sands on a mountaintop. Future looked utterly bleak to me as I descended the mountain and walked away into absolute uncertai

  These days I'm constantly reminded of a short story I read as a young man. It was titled The Umbrella Man . I don't remember the author. There are only two characters in the story: a man and the Umbrella Man (UM).  The man is travelling home after work by bus. Suddenly he feels a knock on the back of his head. He turns back to see a nondescript middle-aged guy sitting in the seat behind him holding an umbrella. Our man thinks that the knock was accidental.  But the knock is repeated. Man turns back and bestows an annoyed look upon UM. That doesn't work, however. The knock is repeated again. And again. Man gets up and gives a punch on the nose of UM. Even that doesn't deter UM from gifting the knocks at regular intervals.  Man is obviously exasperated. He gets down when the bus reaches near the police station. He has made up his mind to file a case against this eerie intruder in his life. UM gets down and follows the Man, awarding the umbrella-knocks at regular interva

 I happened to watch the Malayalam movie The Great Indian Kitchen  on TV. The movie has been discussed much and in great detail by almost everybody who is a somebody in Kerala. Let me add my little bit too to all that.  First of all, I endorse the cause espoused by the movie: women's liberation . Liberation from the kitchen, from man, from religion, from traditions.  None of these - kitchen, man, religion, traditions - is necessarily bad. On the contrary, all of them could be good and great. But the movie shows an ordinary woman married into a rigidly traditional household where the man is the boss and the wife is a slave. Religion and traditions become useful tools in the hands of the boss to ensure the woman's perpetual slavery. The climax of the movie is a brilliant scene in which the woman's rebellion takes the form of the dirty kitchen water which she hurls on the faces of her husband and father-in-law before walking out of her slavery with bold steps.  Secondly, I lov