Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Last year India arrested a stand-up comic for a joke that he didn’t tell. The Time reported that Munawar Iqbal Faruqui was all set to enter the best year of his life hitherto with subscription to his YouTube channel crossing 500,000. On the evening of the New Year’s day in 2021, a group of nationalists put an end to Faruqui’s jokes. Soon he was arrested by the police for a joke that he didn’t crack. They said he would crack jokes that might hurt Hindu sentiments! Faruqui is not the only comic who has been arrested in Modi’s India. From Vir Das to Tanmay Bhatt , quite a few comedians have landed in trouble for the crime of possessing a sense of humour. Laughter is banished from nationalist India. The latest is a letter written by a Press Information Bureau official to the editor of the Deccan Herald for the newspaper’s subtle sense of humour. The following image speaks for itself.  The loss of laughter is the biggest calamity that can befall a nation, I think. There are too

“Wow!” I said to myself as I read the last line of a 573-page Malayalam novel, Ghathakan (Killer ) by K R Meera. Since most readers of this blog don’t/can’t read Malayalam, I won’t write a review but deal with one of its major themes which I found irresistible. Wealth is the ultimate value or virtue in today’s world. Meera’s novel which is a detective story on the one hand and brilliant literature on the other shows how money has come to rule all of us – our politicians and ascetics and the whole lot of us. Interestingly, the novel opens with the infamous demonetisation of 8 Nov 2016. A week after that catastrophe which our Prime Minister hurled at a nation of a billion plus citizens, the protagonist of the novel is attacked by a killer. Satyapriya, the 44-year-old protagonist, is determined to find out why someone wants to kill her. The quest takes her on an arduous and excruciating journey into her past and the pasts of many people including her father, a child abuser. Demoneti

  I’m halfway through K R Meera’s Malayalam novel, Ghathakan (Killer ). The narrator-protagonist compares life to an onion with endless peels. “The onion’s politics is to toss acid to your eyes. Its ideology is the burning sensation in the eyes. Our tears are its message.” As I read the theme of the latest Indispire Edition, #gossip , the onion’s politics rushed to my mind. Gossip is more like an onion than life is. You can peel it endlessly. You can feel its acid in your heart. Its scalds carry intoxicating delights. Quite a lot of the informal human communication – conversations, in simple words – is little more than gossip. Essentially there is nothing wrong in that. People love to talk about their colleagues at workplace, other relatives when they meet at family functions, or neighbours when they are in the home-premises. That’s quite natural, I guess. Life is after all a series of tightrope walks between you and another human being associated with you. It’s only natural that w

Media Watch The sedition law got much media attention in the past week, thanks to the Supreme Court’s freezing of the colonial law. Not one newspaper or magazine that I read supports the sedition law. Every one of them welcomes and appreciates the SC’s interim order. Writing in the Hindustan Times of 13 May, former judge of the SC, Deepak Gupta, asserts in no uncertain terms that the “sedition law has no place in a democracy.” Who wants to retain such an antiquated law? Those who are afraid of criticism do. Stifling criticism is to create a police state, argues Gupta. Certain restrictions are required when it comes to freedom of expression. No nation can afford to compromise its security, foreign relationships, public order, decency and morality. But putting charges of sedition on people who criticise the government’s policies is to invite troubles. Gupta quotes Mahatma Gandhi who was arrested for sedition by the British. “Affection (for the government or country) cannot be manu

Close to my heart Small things can make me indecently happy or sad. An old friend once compared my mood swings to the maxima-minima graph of a mathematical function. “You are either on the top or at the bottom,” he said like a concerned friend. That was long ago, some time in the 80s. Four decades later, I still remain the same. Painfully aware of the maxima and minima of my mood swings. Helplessly aware. Because they are not under my control. Some things are in your blood. You have to live with them. A friend of Maggie had arranged the adoption of one of my kittens two days back. Today she told Maggie that the kitten was only crying all the time without eating or drinking anything. That was enough for my mood to hit the bottom. “Tell her to return the kitten immediately,” I told Maggie. “I’ll pick it up from their place.” I couldn’t bear the thought of that little creature wandering around looking for its mother and siblings crying all the while.   Maggie knows when I’m serious. A

Media Watch This week’s Open magazine is a treat with a difference. For a change, it takes us away from our murky politics to some exotic places in various parts of the country. The lead article belongs to Madhulika Liddle, and it is about Old Delhi. We get a brief history of Old Delhi – Shahjahanabad and its inimitable architecture. We can encounter “the cows, the goats, the dogs, the seething humanity” of Chandni Chowk. Look at the flowers piled outside the Gauri Shankar Mandir. Breathe in the fragrances of the spices at Khari Baoli, Asia’s largest spice market. Unlike in the olden days, now there are a lot of other wares on sale too: clothes, jewellery, electrical goods and spectacles. The author communicates the spirit of the 17 th century as she takes us to certain places like the Khazanchi Haveli. A few of the other articles in the issue take us to some places of religious interest such as the Buddhist caves in Western Maharashtra, Buddhist sites in Sikkim (and Thailand

Maggie and I went to watch Jumbo Circus yesterday. The shows – 3 daily – were going on for a month and they were coming to an end in two days. “It’s a dying art,” I told Maggie. “Let’s encourage the troupe by taking two front seat tickets.” Maggie agreed. “Don’t expect much,” I warned her on the way. The show didn’t disappoint us though it had none of the glory that circuses had in yonder years. There was no live band with scintillating music in the background. There were no animals except a few birds and dogs. The entire troupe consisted of just about a score artistes and a few backstage crew. All of them looked weary and listless. Even when they tried to smile at the end of their performance, the smiles came out warped. There wasn’t much to cheer them, I guess; most of the chairs remained vacant in the huge tent. The juggler missed his balls too often. The acrobats on cycles lost balance occasionally. The rest was as great as it could be in the given situation with a shrunken a