Tomichan Matheikal's blog

  Of the last 25 years in India, 13 years belonged to the Bharatiya Janata Party. Vajpayee and Modi were the Prime Ministers. Modi still continues in power. Still the party keeps blaming others - some of whom died five centuries ago - for the country's woes. Like Nietzsche's gods, we will die laughing if this party continues to govern us like this. [When somebody like Yogi Adityanath comes to Kerala and expresses his anguish over women's safety in the state , the joke is a real killer.] Modi has been in power for seven years now. He ascended the throne in Indraprastha with a lot of promises most of which would have made Modi himself laugh to his death if he had the ability to laugh. At least, as Shashi Tharoor said, Modi won't vote for himself if he listens to his own speeches made in the 2014 campaigns.  Modi promised us achhe din [happy days] and gave us the worst days ever.  Within months of coming to power in 2014, Modi sought to sell India's land to the corpora

It is not always the villains out there that bring us our sorrows. Quite many of our sorrows are our own creations. Back in the 1970s the illustrious pop group, ABBA, sang about Chiquitita’s sorrows. “You’re enchained by your own sorrow,” the song went. Chiquitita was always sure of herself. But now she is a broken person. The song counsels Chiquitita to accept life’s inevitable heartaches and the scars left by them. She should dance again as she used to do and the pain will end. Chiquitita dear, It aches my heart to see you depressed especially because you are a buoyant personality by nature. You liked to fly like the butterfly savouring the honey in each flower on the way. And you thought that you were entitled to all the honey in flowers. You seemed to assume that the flowers secreted honey just for you. You were the centre of the universe in your own weltanschauung. Ah, that’s a big word I have used. I don’t like big words. But you do. You did, at least. You loved all the

The Bandwagon Effect refers to the general human tendency to acquire a particular style, behaviour or attitude just because everybody else is doing it. You will find a lot of young boys adopting a bizarre-looking hairstyle just because the other boys are doing it. Quite many people begin to support one particular leader or party merely because that leader or party is popular currently. Beliefs, ideas or fads acquire force in proportion to the number of people who accept them. In other words, as more people come to believe in something, others hop on the bandwagon regardless of underlying evidence of its veracity. People do this because of the general human tendency to conform. In politics, people tend to vote for the most popular party just because it is the most popular party. In fact, it may be the worst party for the future of the country. But people want to be on the winning popular side, whatever the side actually is. Popularity has a diabolic appeal. It enchants and blinds pe

  One of the characters in Kerala’s folklore is Naranath Bhranthan or the Lunatic of Naranam. He was too wise for the world of ordinary mortals. His wisdom is what made him appear insane to the less wise ones. His most eccentric and conspicuous habit was rolling a huge boulder uphill and then letting it go down as he stands there atop laughing loud. Once a goddess appeared to him and offered him a boon. “Shift the elephantiasis from my left leg to the right,” he said. The wish was granted. He did not ask the goddess to remove the disease. For an ordinary person, his request is a clear sign of his insanity. The wise man knows that there is no ultimate escape from evil. Evil is an integral part of human existence; it may change shape. Human endeavours are as absurd as one’s rolling of a boulder uphill with no purpose other than the rolling itself. You wake up early in the morning, cook food, prepare children for their school, send the children by their school bus, travel to your wo

From here  "I am the best." This was the slogan of one of my colleagues in Delhi. She taught this slogan to every student of hers with an indomitable spirit. Her students (who were my students too) tended to take it literally. Many of them behaved like absolute egotists who were entitled to the best of everything. She too possessed that sense of entitlement. She was a buoyant lady who knew how to play her cards deftly. No one could defeat her in the game of life. But she couldn't survive a catastrophe that came on her way. Her son died in a bike accident and that tragedy ate her away. She died a few months after her son's death.  She was the most positive-spirited person I ever knew. Obstacles were opportunities for her. She converted every obstacle into an opportunity to take out a new weapon from her inexhaustible armoury. For her, being 'positive' meant precisely that: being as aggressive as the wild boar while looking as cool as a lamb.  Whenever people sp

  This is about my own book, the only novel I have written so far: Black Hole . It was published just a few weeks back at Amazon as an e-book.  I'm sorry if I appear to be pushing it aggressively and unabashedly. Like every writer, I would love to have as many readers as possible. A few readers have told me that the book is slightly difficult. I agree. I didn't intentionally make it difficult. But I didn't intend to write a simple novel either. If life is convoluted, can literature be easy? Let me tell you how  Black Hole is structured so that your reading it will become easier. There are 6 chapters. Chapters 1,3, and 5 are about Devlok Ashram and its godmen. The first godman is Kailashputar Boprai whose nights were "haunted by nondescript phantoms" until he found peace in being a godman. He is succeeded by much inferior minds (inferior hearts, rather) in the persons of Amarjeet and Nityananda (who was originally Nitin Jane/Jain). Like any establishment, Devlok su

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