Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Book Review Title: The Monk Author: Matthew Lewis A lot of evil is found in hearts that claim to be religious. Published in 1796, this Gothic novel lays bare some of that revoltingly horrifying evil in the most macabre way possible. It is set in Madrid and much of the action takes place in a Catholic monastery and a convent. It may be useful to remember that the author was only 20 years old when he wrote this. Hence you will find some parts grating against your aesthetic sensibility. On the whole, however, it is a riveting novel with a lot of suspense, drama, lust, perversions, hypocrisy and depravity. Most of the evil is perpetrated by religious persons, especially the monk named Ambrosio who is the abbot of a Capuchin monastery, and the prioress of St Clare’s Convent. Father Ambrosio is a living saint for the people around the monastery. The novel opens with a huge audience assembling to listen to his weekly homily. One of the devotees describes him thus: His knowledge is s

  Dr Joseph Thonikuzhiyil Joseph is an old friend of mine. We got to know each other in 1987 and the friendship continued for many years. Joseph appears a number of times in my memoir, Autumn Shadows . We were colleagues in the department of English at St Edmund’s College, Shillong for five years. Luck did not favour me and I had to give up the lucrative job. Soon Delhi became my refuge and leaving Shillong turned out to be a wise decision. So did my misfortune become my luck? Luck and fate. What do they mean? When something turns out to be good, is it luck? Otherwise, fate? In one of his relaxed evenings, Joseph wrote me a WhatsApp message which sounded poetic as well as philosophical to me. I requested him to write a guest post on the topic and he consented. Below is what he wrote. The Author Dr Joseph Thonikuzhiyil has over thirty-two years of teaching experience - national and international. He has had vast experience in training candidates for all types of English competitiv

And Adani came back with a bang! A protest that lasted 140 days came to an end in Vizhinjam the other day. For those who don’t know, Vizhinjam is a seaport near Thiruvananthapuram, capital of Kerala. The International Container Trans-shipment Terminal project got under way there in 2015, not much after Narendra Modi became India’s Prime Minister. Modi is important here – as anywhere in the cosmos now – because the project was handed over on a platter to none other than his friend, Gautam Shantilal Adani. It was Oommen Chandy’s Congress government in Kerala then. The irony is that the Marxist government of Pinarayi Vijayan which succeeded soon went out of its way to support Adani though Vijayan’s party is the very antithesis of capitalism, particularly crony capitalism of Modi’s kind. Vijayan’s party is also vehemently opposed to everything that Modi’s party stands for. But in Vizhinjam, the two parties came together, shook hands and partook of Adani’s sumptuous dinner. Years pass

Photo by Arno Senoner on Unsplash He loved flowers. Or so it appeared. He had a garden, a huge one. It appeared like a garden from a distance. But the flowers grew in crowded spaces. They looked like cows in a goshala. Though they were cared for better. They got regular water and manure. They were sheltered from the ravages of climate change.   And when they were in full bloom Were plucked and wrought into wreathes To be laid on dead bodies And monuments of fabricated history.  

With a Khasi couple [middle two] - circa1990 One of the many responses to my last post is given below.  I thought of giving it a personal reply since it was a personal query. On second thought, I concluded that a public response would be better since many people might have similar queries some of which cast aspersions on the indigenous people of Shillong. The most important clarification I have to make is that my problems in Shillong were not created by the indigenous people of Shillong at all. The Khasis who are the indigenous people can be as friendly as they can be hostile. It depends on how you deal with them. They are tribal people and there is a certain degree of clannishness in their outlooks. That comes, I believe, from some sort of insecurity feeling coupled with an inferiority complex that seems to run deep in the tribe, particularly among the menfolk. If one of their own scholars, Kynpham Sing Nonkynrih, whose voluminous book on the Khasis I reviewed recently, is t

Nightmares abound in my sleeps. They are all very similar too like the sheep in a flock. Their fidelity to one theme used to disturb me. Not any more, because I have accepted them as my lifelong companions. Moreover, their frequency has declined considerably. Some mysterious but friendly person persuades me to go on a journey and takes me along strange yet familiar landscapes. Rugged mountains with turbulent rivers. Initially the place looks familiar, like Shillong where I lived the most painful years of my life. Eventually, however, the place assumes fiendish shades and undertones. There are people and they don’t seem to notice me. Yet they look menacing indirectly as if they are lying in ambush just waiting for an opportunity to pounce on me. The person who brought me here has vanished. I walk alone with inimical forces all around. There is no harm done to me but the threat is always looming all around. Sometimes I am caught in a labyrinth on the mountain. Sometimes it’s a labyri

Book Review Title: Death in Holy Orders Author: P D James Publisher: Alfred A Knopf, New York, 2001 Pages: 415 St Anselm’s is an immense Victorian mansion on “one of the bleakest parts of the East Coast of England.”* It is a theological college of the Church of England with four priest-teachers and 20 ordinands. One fine morning, the dead body of one of the young ordinands is washed ashore. It is assumed to be an accident until an anonymous letter reaches Sir Alred Treeves, adoptive father of the ordinand and a flamboyant businessman. The letter implies the possibility of a murder. None less than Commander Adam Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard is commissioned to find out the truth. Dalgliesh’s arrival at the ecclesiastical college is followed by three deaths one of which is a violent murder, another appears natural death, and the third seems to be an accident. The novel probes all these four deaths in a complex and gripping narrative. What lends charm to the novel, in addition