Tomichan Matheikal's blog

  Indiblogger was a blogger’s paradise once upon a time. The bulk of my readers came via that platform. Each of my posts used to get over a hundred votes in those days. Now the posts feel nostalgic about a double-digit vote which comes rarely. Quite many bloggers have abandoned this community. Understandable. There isn’t much happening here anymore. Back in the heyday of Indiblogger, hundreds of bloggers thronged the platform every day. There used to be a lot of activities and gifts too. I got gift vouchers worth thousands of rupees. There was a time when I didn’t spend a single rupee from my pocket to buy all the books I loved because Indiblogger’s gift vouchers kept coming like an endless bonanza. Good days don’t last long. The gift vouchers stopped altogether. The regular meets of bloggers arranged by Indispire in different cities stopped too. Soon the platform metamorphosed into the ghost of its earlier being. It continues in existence and a few bloggers like me have retained

“Devil is the arrogance of the spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt,” says William to Jorge. William and Jorge are respectively the protagonist and the antagonist of Umberto Eco’s novel, The Name of the Rose , which sold over 50 million copies since its publication in 1983. The original was published in Italian in 1980. William and Jorge are both Catholic monks. One is a hero and the other is a villain. You can be a hero or a villain irrespective of the system you belong to. The problem is not with the system but with you. That is the quintessential message of Eco’s novel. The novel begins with the journey of William and his young disciple Adso to an abbey in Italy in Nov 1327. William is a monk and Adso is a novice. They belong to two different congregations: Franciscans and Benedictines respectively. It was the time when Pope John XXII and King Louis IV were at loggerheads with each other and the Franciscans had the support of the king while the Benedi

Isolde was exceptionally beautiful. She paid heavy prices for that beauty. Accused of a crime that she had not committed, Isolde is consigned to the stake. She will be burnt alive. As she ascends the stake, some lepers appear with a request to the king. “Give us Isolde,” they cry. The lepers are people shunned by everyone. They are detested outcasts whom nobody even wants to look at. Horrible people with rotting flesh. Give us Isolde, they cried to the king. Burning at the stake is not enough punishment for her, they argued. She had betrayed the king’s love. She dared to love another man when the king had chosen her for himself. Give her the punishment she deserves, the lepers clamoured. Send her to us. We will sleep with her one by one and sate her lust. The king’s inflated ego was pleased to send the snowlike purity of Isolde to the embrace of the rotting lepers. The lepers were delighted. The lust that was burning in their veins would get the best prey it ever could. The

Book Review Title: Funeral Nights Author: Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih Published by Context, 2021 As I reached the last page (1007) of this book, a sigh of relief escaped from my chest. I had begun reading it months ago. I read many other books in between, but this one continued to be as charming as it was daunting like an arduous mountain peak that at once beckons you and intimidates you. But never did I feel that I should abandon reading it altogether. After all, it is about the people of a place where I lived 15 years: Shillong. Let me confess right away that I wouldn’t even have bought this book had I not had a personal connection with its contents. The Khasis were my first colleagues and first students. This book is their history. Written in the guise of a novel, this is more an encyclopaedia on Khasi people, their history, folklores, myths, and even behaviours. What is said about the Mahabharata can be adapted for this book too: What is not here is nowhere else in the Khas

When the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China was launching world’s first 6G satellite , India’s Prime Minister was inaugurating the renovation of Somnath Temple. Temples and statues are India’s PM’s priorities. Kashi Vishwanath Corridor Project was inaugurated by the PM two months before the UP assembly election. Of course, there is no link between the two events. Our PM is above silly sectarian thinking. He is a globe-trotter, we all know. Nay, he is the Messiah of the world, Vishwaguru. Nevertheless, let us not ignore the fact that he is the chairman of Somnath Temple Trust. He inaugurated the renovation projects of that temple in August 2021 though the temple had been renovated after independence by the then deputy PM Sardar Patel. Soon after Modiji became PM, he launched the renovation project of the Kedarnath Temple. Now that work is over. You are welcome to Modiji’s Kedarnath. The grand Ayodhya Temple’s foundation stone was laid by Modiji in Aug 202

80-year-old men call a meeting of 70-year-old men to decide the retirement age of some 60-year-old people. This is what’s happening in India. My state of Kerala recently raised the retirement age to 60 for people working in the state’s PSUs. There were immediate protests from the Congress which recently elected an 80-year-old man as their president and the BJP which worships a 72-year-old Prime Minister who is all set for another term in the next election when he will be 74. There is a serious unemployment problem in Kerala and hence hampering the opportunities of the youth for employment by raising the retirement age of existing staff is unjust. That is the argument. But Kerala’s life expectancy is 77 and why should one retire at 56? Instead of asking people to retire, the government should discover/create new job opportunities for the youth. If politicians can continue to work at the age of 80, why can’t the common man too? Karunanidhi was in office at the age of 87. So was Jyo

Bobby, one of my 3 cats, while I was writing this post. For some time he was on my lap and then found a better place on my printer. The white paint on the walls just below the windowsills are stained with the pawprints of my cats. When someone asked me why I let my cats stain my otherwise clean white walls, my answer was simple: “It’s my house, they’re my cats.” My cats have the freedom to enter through any open window of my house. I clean the stains left by them once a week or so which means the stains remain there most of the days. The last time I got my house painted I asked the painter to help me with this problem. “Why not apply a washable paint just below the windows?” I asked. “That won’t look good,” he said. “We’ll use a wall paint which can be cleaned with a wet piece of cloth,” he continued when I looked unhappy with what he said. The wet cloth doesn’t really remove all the pawmarks . It doesn’t matter. Because my cats are more important to me than the chastity of the white