Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Book Review Title: A Thousand Cuts: An innocent question and deadly answers Author: T J Joseph Translator: Nandakumar K Having read the Malayalam original of this book, I turned to my mobile phone to catch up with the latest news. The first headline that Google gave me is: Darul Huda Islamic University comes out against Literature Festival in Kerala . This book is written by a college professor whose palm was chopped off with a hatchet in 2010 by a group of young Muslim terrorists. He was attacked brutally while he was returning from Sunday church service. He was stabbed in many places and some of the wounds were near-fatal. His palm was chopped off and thrown away. This book, written originally in Malayalam, tells us why the professor was attacked so inhumanly and how it changed his life quite radically. What provoked the terrorists was a particular question that the professor had set in the Malayalam question paper for the undergraduates of his college. It was an internal

Book Review Title: All the light we cannot see Author: Anthony Doerr Publisher: Fourth Estate, London, 2014 Pages: 531 What we call light is just a tiny fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum. Most part of the electromagnetic spectrum remains beyond ordinary human perception. Such is human life too: so many of its shades remain beyond our ordinary perception and understanding. Anthony Doerr’s novel, All the light we cannot see , unravels for us some of the mysterious shades of human life. Marie-Laure LeBlanc leaves Paris with her father Daniel who is entrusted with the task of carrying a rare diamond, Sea of Flames , to safe custody when the second world war breaks out. The National Museum of Natural History, Paris, has made three counterfeit diamonds of the Sea of Flames. Four men are assigned the task of carrying each of these diamonds to four different destinations. None of them knows whether they are carrying the original diamond or the counterfeit. Marie-Laure a

“When you choose to fight for truth and justice, you will have to face serious threats.” Sister Rani Maria, the protagonist of the movie, is counselled by her mother in a letter. Face of the Faceless is a movie that shows how serious those threats are. This movie is a biopic. It shows us the life of a Catholic nun who dedicated her life to serve some Adivasis of Madhya Pradesh [MP] and ended up as a martyr. If it were not a real story, this movie would have been an absolute flop. Since it is the real story of not only a nun but also the impoverished and terribly exploited Adivasis in a particular village of MP, it keeps you engrossed. It is a sad movie, right from the beginning to the end. It is a story of the good versus evil, the powerless versus the powerful, the heroic versus the villainous, the divine versus the diabolic. Having said that, I must hasten to add one conspicuous fact: the movie does not ever present Christianity or its religious practices as the only right way

“If you keep doing the same things, you will keep getting the same results,” Dave Ramsey said. It doesn’t matter who Dave Ramsey is. I don’t know, in fact. Albert Einstein could have said that as well. From the time BJP came to power in Delhi, India has been doing more or less the same thing: sectarian politics which favours one particular community and marginalises all others. Since the majority of Indians belong to the community favoured by BJP, no other party could arrive at an effective strategy for winning elections. People obviously want favours from those in power. And BJP is giving those favours to the majority. The majority will then vote BJP. BJP continues to rule. Happily. Till date. And so some genius in the other camp struck upon a strategy. Divide the majority community along caste lines. This is not a new strategy at all. This was effectively made use of in all the Hindi belt states earlier many times by many parties. What is new now is that almost all the non-BJP

Image from City With No Divorce I attended a wedding ceremony today at St Xavier’s Church near Kottayam in Kerala (India). What I liked most was the homily which was based on the fact that a particular town in Bosnia-Herzegovina has no divorces. I checked it out with the help of Google and got this: City With No Divorce . “ Siroki Brijeg is a rural town of 30,000 inhabitants… The city has suffered centuries of war and famine, cultural and political strife. Yet, not one single divorce has been recorded .” The secret is the cross. Of Jesus. The homily said. The wedding ceremony in Siroki Brijeg has an additional ritual: the couple are made to choose a cross on which they pledge to be faithful to each other till the end. ‘Marriage Crucifix’ is the name given to the tradition. It’s not just a wedding ritual; it’s meant for the entire married life. The cross on which they pledge is taken home as a holy icon to be looked at every day! What the ritual means is this: you are not marryi

Brownie snuggles up against me every evening. Whenever her pregnancy advances, she does this: get close to me. She has a way of getting me to pat her forehead and belly. She will rub her head against my palm until I start patting her.  Eventually she will get me to prepare a safe and comfortable set-up for her kittening. She has a way with me, so much so that Maggie says Brownie is the only creature who has succeeded in making me toe the line. I want to celebrate Brownie today. With some of her pics. Brownie was just a month-and-a-half old then. Her siblings Dessie and Denny are here too. Dessie is still with us in robust health while Denny disappeared long ago. Male cats are not quite loyal, I learnt.  With Bobs, her son, who also left us eventually Let me conclude this celebration with a short video in which Brownie displays her majestic indifference to Kingini, the latest addition to my feline family.  Related posts Kingini The Story of Kingini

  Book Review Title: Gods and Ends Author: Lindsay Pereira Publisher: Penguin Vintage, 2021 Pages: 205 This is a book which presents characters taken from real life. You will think, as you read the novel, that you know this character and this and this too. Only the names sound different, even exotic: Vaz, D’Souza, Sequeira, and so on. All the characters are Goan Catholics living in Orlem, Mumbai. All the major characters are tenants of Obrigado Mansion, a rundown building belonging to aged Francisco Fernandez who lives with his daughter-in-law, occupying two of the rooms in the mansion. All other rooms are occupied by families that are grappling with quite a few problems. There are five families plus one widow who lives alone in one of the rooms. Each one of these characters catches our attention with their unique earthiness. The Sequeira family in Room 108, for example, is headed by Jude Sequeira who is little more than an alcoholic. He has a job in a factory. But since hi