Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Book Review   Bernardine Evaristo's Booker winner of 2019, Girl, Woman, Other , is a novel that tells the story of 12 black British women, most of whom are lesbians. Aged from 19 to 93, they belong to diverse classes, cultures and sexual identities. One of them, Penelope, doesn't know who her real parents are until the end of the novel. And when she learns about them in the end, she realises that her DNA is 87% European and 13% African. And in the 87%, 22 is Scandinavian, 25 Irish, 17 British, and so on with 16% being European Jewish too.  What are we? This is a question that has enchanted writers for ever. We make all sorts of identities and fight in their names endlessly. The hippies want to live in communes sharing everything. Environmentalists want to ban a whole range of things like aerosols, plastic bags and deodorant. Vegetarians want a non-meat policy. Vegans want that policy to be extended to non-dairy. The Rastas want to legalise cannabis. "The Hari Krishnas want

 As a teacher of English language and literature in a senior secondary school, my only complaint in the last few years has been that my students don't read anything other than their course books. "Your answers in the writing section possess the thinking levels of high school students at best," I told my class 12 students the other day while returning their examination answer sheets.  It's not about the style. Style is something that I have stopped bothering about as a teacher. Gone are the days when I could expect from my students a sentence like "A sudden warm rainstorm washes down in sweet hyphens." That sentence, of course, belongs to J M Ledger, no student of mine. A student of mine would have written that as "It rained and there was a wind also". As prosaic and brusque as that. Poetry died long ago. Style died too. Stifled by ruthless pragmatism.  It's not about style, however. Not poetry either. It's about the content. I can forgive t

Image from The Quint   In 1944, the Nazis erected a vast conglomeration of structures in Poland which was fenced with barbed wire. In one of them was found a heap of clothes stripped from the Jewish victims - a pathetic heap consisting of an array of items from men's suits to babies' shoes.  Another building had three rooms. In the first of these the prisoners were made to remove their clothing; in the second they were passed under a series of shower baths; and in the third they were packed tightly so much so that none of them could move even their limbs. Three pipes led into this room from the outside, and there was a fourth aperture for a guard to watch what was going on inside.  When the room was filled entirely with stripped human beings packed like sardines, there suddenly came a shower of crystals through the pipes. On contact with air, these crystals generated deadly gases. The guard on duty outside could see the men, women, and children dying inside with exploding lungs

  Pavleen was haunted by nightmares though she lay holding her husband in a tight grasp. A woman wailing helplessly as she was chased by men who looked like monsters rattled Pavleen’s nerves all through the night. Exactly fifty years ago, in the torrid summer of 1934 in Lahore, a woman was chased by men with long beards and turbaned heads. Zenib was her name. She kept wailing as she ran until she collapsed at the feet of Buta Singh who was digging his farmland. “Save me, save me, please.” Zenib pleaded. Buta Singh was a pugree-wala too. He looked at the other pugree-walas in front of him, people metamorphosed into demons by anger and hate. Buta raised the woman at his feet by her arms and looked at her face. He did not see the terror in her eyes. The beauty of the youth on that face buffeted Buta’s heart like a tempest. “Stay behind me,” he told her. “What do you want?” Buta asked the men. “Give her to us,” they said. “She’s ours.” “She’s mine,” Buta asserted. The men in

  The first feedback I received on my new book, Black Hole , is that I put off the lay reader with too many allusions and references which are not made clear enough. "All your readers are not going to be people of English Literature," the message went, "nor are they going to be all Christians." My mention of Kipling's 'white man's burden' and Henry VIII's murderous lust were cited as examples.  The feedback came from a very good friend who was with me through thick and thin for over a decade. But she is a person with a double Masters in English language and literature. While I agree with her that my novel is not an easy read at all (I didn't mean it to be either) and concede also that quite a few of my allusions are likely to put off some Indian readers who are not acquainted with Christianity, the fact that a person of her knowledge and literary background made the remark continues to amuse me even now.  The feedback made me sit and think fo