Tomichan Matheikal's blog

From istockphoto Fiction It was after many years Ramesh visited a beach. He had just retired from his lecturer’s job in a college and suddenly felt too free. All those countless research papers he wrote for academic journals seemed to mock him now. The short stories he wrote for his blog made more sense. His only published novel, Sarayu’s Sorrows , was a better consolation. Nevertheless, a sense of emptiness loomed like a mocking monster before him. That was when he decided to sit in contemplation on a beach. The sea has a peculiar charm, he knew, though he hardly got the time to visit the beach that was just a few kilometres from his college. He was always engaged. Reading, teaching, and writing research papers in adherence to the university’s norms. He hadn’t found time even to marry in that hectic schedule. Ambitious schedule, he smiled wryly to himself. If he had a wife and children life wouldn’t have been so empty now in the retired life, he thought. He was not sure, though. H

Kerala celebrates its state festival, Onam, today. The spirit of Onam is the sheer antithesis of contemporary politics which is governed by post-truth strategies. This morning’s national dailies brought us the news that the Income Tax raiders laid siege to more than 110 offices which were not kowtowing to the ruling party at the Centre. Raids and other forms of oppression have become the most common way of dealing with critics of the union government today. Every Indian today is expected to dumbly accept whatever the union government dishes out. This is just the opposite of what Onam teaches. Onam is about self-sacrifice and integrity. Fundamentally a harvest festival, it is sustained by the legend of King Mahabali during whose reign Kerala was a sort of utopia where the people were highly virtuous. Honesty, equality, justice and other principles guided the nation unfailingly. The king was the paragon of all such virtues. But he was an Asura king. Hence the gods in the heavens were

The last tour from Sawan The examiner was visibly offended by my answer. That was in 1988. I was completing my B.Ed. course and the viva voce exam was going on. The question put by the examiner was: “How useful has the B.Ed. course been to you as a teacher?” My answer was: “A year of actual experience in the classroom is far more useful than this course.” I had had a year and a half’s experience at St Joseph’s school in Shillong before that school deputed me for the B.Ed. course on a contract. So I was speaking from real life experience. Nothing teaches you a job better than the work experience itself. True, some theoretical knowledge does help and stuff like Bloom’s Taxonomy still comes in handy years after my B.Ed. course brought it to me. But no one learns acting from the National School of Drama any more than one learns to teach from a B.Ed. college. The Taj Mahal was not built by a university-trained architect. Frankly speaking, most of my B.Ed. teachers were utterly uninspi

 Book Extract Suffering is inevitable. That is a fundamental lesson of life. Religions teach us that, philosophy does, and literature shows the same too. While dealing with the inevitable though unwanted, our options are quite limited. We should change what can be changed and accept what cannot be changed. We may need to adapt ourselves in the face of what we cannot change. Religion, philosophy, the arts, and a lot of things can help us to make life easier in the face of suffering. Aren’t these things primarily meant for that: to help us make life bearable and as pleasant as possible? Why haven’t they been able to achieve their purposes? Obviously, they have not been used rightly. On the other hand, they have been misused by certain people. Religion joined hands with politics and became a tool in the hands of bigots or the power-hungry. Philosophy is dead for all practical purposes, killed by our pursuit of the superficial and by the prevalence of the farcical. The arts have been t

 Some days are very uninspiring. Today is one such. The school closed yesterday for a week of Onam holidays. Brownie's little kittens kept me entertained this morning. They are 32 days old, just the time they get restless. They move out at the very first opportunity and their mother, Brownie, goes after them to bring them back, one by one, taking them rather laboriously by the scruff of their neck. They don't stay in, however. Brownie becomes impatient and growls. I opt to help her by carrying all the four together to their bed and closing the door of the room. They rush to the door and register their protests loud enough. After that, they go to sleep.  I wish to bring some pics of my kittens and cats. At present there are seven of them at home: 3 adults and 4 young ones. These young ones will leave us soon. One is already booked.  Brownie's kittens Brownie and Bobby Bobby is also Brownie's son but from the previous litter. His favourite hobby is to prevent me from read

Landslide near my village - image from The Hindu Five members of a family were washed away along with their house the other day just a few kilometres from my village. Such incidents caused by unprecedented landslides are becoming frequent in Kerala. They are some of the consequences of climate change which is itself caused by what we have done to our planet. They are happening not only in Kerala. They happen all over the world. More than half a century ago scientists warned humanity about an imminent disaster called climate change . In the 1980s many solutions were suggested by concerned scholars and scientists. Lester Brown, one of them, defined sustainability as development that meets our needs without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their needs. Forty years after the world applauded Brown’s theory, the world stands in much poorer shape today. We don’t put theories into practice; we only clap for them. It is getting late now. We need to start acting

  Fiction Angel woke up a little later than usual that morning. It was drizzling outside and that gave him a convenient excuse for pulling the blanket over himself once again. He should have been tapping the rubber trees. A little drizzle didn’t matter because the rubber trees had been given plastic skirts precisely to let the tapping go on irrespective of the weather. Moreover, Angel was supposed to be a good young man doing everything sincerely like the angels. Angel was not his real name. He got that name after he played the role of an angel in a play directed by Father Joseph, the parish priest. Not only the people of the parish but also Father Joseph thought that the young man was as good as an angel. Well, almost. Angels are as good as God, according to Father Joseph. Not as perfect or omnipotent or omniscient. As good . Goodness is innocence. Angels have absolute faith in God because of their innocence. They don’t doubt or question God’s ways. Some angels did doubt. They