Tomichan Matheikal's blog

With my grandniece - the antique and the latest When the year ends the old calendar goes to the dump and the new one takes its place. The old has to go and make way for the new. This is the law of nature. The new may not always be better than the old, though. I have witnessed the death of many old entities in my lifetime. The transistor radio, landline phone, VCR, film camera, Bajaj Chetak scooter (ah, my beloved for 16 years) – that list is endless. My list ended with the Chetak because the nostalgia it brings veils out everything else of the old dispensation. That scooter carried Maggie and me for all those years. It was in excellent condition when my government decided that it should die. The law has its own way, as one of the chief ministers of Kerala used to repeat ad nauseam whenever he faced problems. His solution for all political problems was to sweep them under the legal carpet. There the problems will lie for an infinite period. And the calendar will be dumped inevitably

The following is a guest post written by Anupama Joshy , one of my former students. I asked her to write on this topic because of one of her casual remarks in a chat message. Asked to introduce herself , following is what Anupama sent me. Completed my lower primary education from The Bethlehem International. Middle school and high school from Carmel CMI Public School. Both in Vazhakulam where I have been residing. A second-year student of BA English Literature. Hobbies are reading, writing, watching movies and web shows.   Love spending time with friends and family. Trying to be a better person every day. Words have evolved a lot through the generations. The archaic word 'thou' that meant 'you' can now be read 'though' in the gen-Z text slang. Means of communication have become online with emojis and GIFs serving as the medium of communication. People are hesitant to talk face to face and rather prefer 'chatting' online. 'Can't talk, What

Christmas was the most joyful season of my childhood. The study table would become the base of the crib that father made every year more or less in the same style. Palm leaves for the sides and roof. The bed was made up of a kind of grass which was known as Unneesopullu (Infant Jesus grass) since it was abundant in the Christmas season. [Now I find it pretty tedious to cut off that grass which invades my garden like heartless marauders in December.] The Christmas carol group from the parish church and the midnight Mass were all part of my childhood delights of the season. The petromax lamp carried by the carol team was one of my chief attractions. There would be some fireworks too to add to the delight. The most memorable Christmas of my life was in 1978. I was in Kotagiri as a student of religion. One of my teachers took me along with a few others to a nearby church in the evening to listen to carols. It was the first time I heard such spellbinding rendition of carols. Silent Mi

Teachers have to play multiple roles. When the school’s annual day comes, they become musical directors, choreographers, script writers, cosmeticians, and so on. This is the first time, however, I saw a teacher doing laundry too. This teacher is in charge of an item which has 20 artistes. A day before the programme she gets the required 20 costumes, all taken on rent from a professional renter of costumes. The rent per costume is a staggering Rs700. When the teacher checks the costumes, she finds them all soiled. A few of them have bloodstains too, menstrual blood presumably. She points it out but the school tells her to ignore it. She finds it insulting to hand over such costumes to her students and so takes the costumes home to launder them. The first question that comes to my mind is about the professional ethics of the costume renter who charges exorbitant rents for costumes used many times by different performers without laundering. I learn that this keeps happening year after

Last Christmas I gave you my heart But the very next day you gave it away This year, to save me from tears I'll give it to someone special Wham! sang those lines in 1980s. They wouldn’t sing it today. No one wants to give their heart anymore to anyone, it seems. Maybe, there’s no heart anymore. Situationship has become a regular word in English.  Relationship is a burden today. Why endure the stress and strain caused by such commitments? Love the skin, enjoy the sex, and say goodbye when you are tired of it. You can have multiple partners too. The New Indian Express tells me [18 Dec 2022] that there many types of relationships (situationships?) among the youth today.   Cookie jar relationship , for example, refers to dating multiple people before deciding who will be better for you even if it is for a few days. Keeping one on the hook because either one of the partners is not ready to commit even for a few days is called benching . Roaching is when you hide from your pa

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