Tomichan Matheikal's blog

From the time I started teaching English in school, I’ve been hearing complaints from science teachers and also a few mathematics teachers that their students got poor grades in the final exams because of their students’ limited knowledge of English. I usually don’t take such complaints seriously. I take them as convenient excuses, the normal human tendency to pass the blame on to somebody else for one’s own inefficiency. In the first place, my students score excellent grades in English which means their knowledge of English is good enough as far as the Education Board’s standards are concerned. Secondly, I started my career as a maths and science teacher and got brilliant results from my students whose knowledge of English was not particularly great. Those who know mathematics well will also know that mathematics is a language by itself, a language that has almost nothing to do with the normal human languages like English or Chinese or whatever. Mathematics is the language of ab

I didn’t celebrate the victory of Congress in the Karnataka assembly elections. I celebrated the BJP’s defeat. Congress lost its charm long ago. It is now a party without a vision, without a leader, and without a worthwhile purpose. People might have voted for it because they don’t have any other choice. Until his Bharat Jodo Yatra, Rahul Gandhi was a toddler in politics. The Yatra did bring a lot of sense and maturity to his personality. He may emerge as a great leader one day. He does have certain qualities which most Indian politicians don’t have. He has genuine concern for people. He is capable of reaching out to people unlike most political leaders who surround themselves with their chelas and security personnel. And he is willing to learn. He has much more to learn, however. Congress had become an utterly corrupt party and that is why it was thrown out by India in the last many elections all over the country. Will the new Congress government in Karnataka provide a clean go

  How about walking into a forbidden forest? Welcome to Kattadikadavu in the district of Idukki in Kerala. The following prohibition welcomes you quite majestically. There is a well-trodden path lying ahead beckoning you, especially if you are a lover of forests and mountains. And this is India where signboards don't mean anything much. You choose to follow the trail which soon becomes a concrete path assuring you that you are not on any illegal land. The signboard must be about some forest lying somewhere ahead. You are a good citizen and you decide not to enter that forest. You will abide by the path strictly. Go on.  The concrete path will end soon. You are now walking on boulders. And the climb is quite stiff. Go on. It's good for health. And the forest is beckoning you seductively. Somewhere ahead lies the forbidden forest, which you won't enter because you are a good citizen. You will only watch it from the cliff ahead.  You are a good citizen. You won't enter for

From PM Narendra Modi , 2019 - More to come soon The textbooks of our children have been saffronised already. Now it’s the turn of Bollywood. All efforts are being made to shift the Hindi movie kingdom from Mumbai to somewhere in Uttar Pradesh. The Khans of Bollywood are being sidelined and Kanganas are gobbling the limelight. The Kashmir Files and The Kerala Story are just the beginning of a catastrophe that is descending on the Bollywood. Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh [RSS] is all set to celebrate the centenary of its foundation [1925] with a year-long programme beginning in 2024. About twenty Hindi movies are on the anvil as part of the celebrations, the prominent of which being the history of RSS whose script is written by no less a personage than Vijayendra Prasad, father of Bahubali director Rajamouli. It is rumoured that the budget for this film is greater than the sum spent on the Chandrayan Mission. You have a lot more on RSS coming your way. Biopics are being made on a

I wanted to watch the movie, The Kerala Story , on the day it was released. But none of the theatres near my home screened it for various reasons. Now, a day after the release, I don’t want to watch it at all. Reason: I read a dozen reviews and none has a good word to say about the movie. Every review I’ve read so far, including Adani’s NDTV one, condemns the movie as substandard and crude. The NDTV review asserts that the makers of this movie have no idea about Kerala whatsoever. “The writing is consistently cringeworthy,” says the review. “The acting is no better.” It goes on to rubbish the movie judging it as pathetic without a single saving grace. The only purpose of the movie seems to be “to vilify a state of India on flimsy grounds.” The Indian Express awards one star to the movie and says that even propaganda requires skills. “A poorly-made, poorly-acted rant” is what the Express calls The Kerala Story . The movie is mala fide in intention. It does not seek to interrog

Milton's Satan as imagined by Gustave Doré Bernard Shaw said with his characteristically acerbic wit, “Those who can, do; those who cannot, teach.” Though I have written a few dozen short stories, I don’t consider myself a good story writer. And I think that others don’t think any better either. So I am one of the right persons to teach how to write stories. No, don’t take all that too seriously. I just thought of responding to the week’s Bloghop prompt: “ 3 ways you can add diversity to your stories .” After all, I’ve been a teacher all my life. So, here we go. How to add diversity to your stories? 1. Bring in some evil. I’m sure you know that Satan is the most interesting personality in Milton’s classical Paradise Lost . The all-too-good characters like God and the angels are utterly boring in that poem. Satan towers over all of them as a grand and majestic figure with his eloquence and glamour. Even Adam and Eve are most interesting when they are marked by flaws. Evil

Book Review Title: Dattapaharam: Call of the Forest Author: V J James Translated from Malayalam by: Ministhy S Publisher: Penguin, 2023 Pages: 164 The forest is an enchanting place for many people including me. The chief reason why this book drew my attention is that the forest plays a vital role in it. We live in the forest through this novel. We move in the forest, climb its rocks, bathe in its streams, and sleep in its caves. The smells and sounds of the forest envelop us. The hero of the novel, Freddie Robert, vanishes right in the beginning. He is somewhere there in the deep forest living with all the wild animals because the call of the forest is far sweeter to him than the allures of human civilisation. His friends begin a journey into the forest to find him. The novel is about that journey. The novel is about forest, rather. About the need to merge into nature. The human world is replete with hypocrisy and deceit. The animals are far better. They turn out to b