Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Maggie and I decided to watch a movie during this weeklong Christmas break from school. Our natural choice was Neru , Malayalam movie directed by the illustrious Jeethu Joseph of Drishyam (dubbed or remade successfully into many Indian languages including Hindi) fame. Neru means truth. The movie is about both truth and justice both of which are inextricably intertwined and neither of which is quite available nowadays, especially in a country where the values of the Mahabharat war are upheld as just. And what is that value: everything is fair in war, and life is a perpetual war . Sara, a young blind girl, is raped in her house in Thiruvananthapuram by Michael Joseph, son of an affluent Malayali businessman in Mumbai. Sara, being an exceptionally gifted sculptor, makes a lifelike bust of the rapist which helps in the prompt arrest of the culprit. The police officer who arrests Michael is soon relieved of his charge. This is India, after all. Everything is fair in life’s war here pr

From the Washington Post Bethlehem, the place of Jesus’ birth, is not celebrating Christmas this time, says the Washington Post . The only scene related to Christmas is Jesus entering the world amid a pile of Gazan rubble. Christmas is a festival of joy, peace, magnanimity – goodness, in general. It is a terrible irony that the very place of Jesus’ birth is marked by the opposite of all what Christmas stands for. What meaning will a Christmas carol like Joy to the World have in Bethlehem today? What would Jesus say about the kind of religions that we have today? Isn’t religion the cause of all the strife in Bethlehem and many other places in the world? The Hamas who attacked Israel were motivated by religion. Israel is a nation founded on the bricks of a particular religion. It is another irony that Jesus was born in that religion. Did Jesus found a new religion? I would hesitate to say ‘Yes’ to that question. His intention was to reform Judaism, his religion, not establish a

Book Review   Title: Killers of the Flower Moon: Oil, Murder and the Birth of the FBI Author: David Grann Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2017 Pages: 339 Human greed has no limits. Worse, greed can make people inhuman. David Grann’s book which is classified as ‘history’ reads more like a crime thriller. It tells us the bloodcurdling history of how almost an entire tribe of people, the Osage Indians of Oklahoma, were killed with meticulous planning by a few individuals whose greed overwhelmed their humanity. A few hundred people were killed and many of those deaths were passed off as natural. The author of this book quotes the Osage historian Louis F Burns, “I don’t know of a single Osage family which didn’t lose at least one family member because of the head rights.” The head rights refer to the legal grants given to the Osage people for selling the oil in their lands. The whites in North America perpetrated many atrocities on the original inhabitants of those lands. E

Gardening is gaining a renewed interest in my heart. A few weeks back, I bought some new flower pots, potting mixture, and some saplings. Five of the saplings were of Pinwheel Flower or what we call here in Kerala Nandiarvattom . Here is a picture of one of the Nandiarvattoms I planted.  It’s growing pretty well. I would look at their small little green leaves and the pinwheel white flowers every morning and evening with a lot of fondness. Good going, I would tell them patting their gentle leaves. Some plants are sweeter than flowers. Nandiarvattoms belong to that category. The other day, when I returned from school, I found one of my beloved Nandiarvattoms in this shape.  It nearly broke my heart. What a transformation in a single day! I looked at the others. They were all safe. I did a detailed investigation and discovered the villain. A caterpillar. A green crawling worm with big eyes and obese body. Ah, you grew fat on the leaves of my Nandiarvattom without leaving a single

One of my cats, Brownie How many times have you wished to be somebody else? To be the emperor of Akhand Bharat Or be in the Forbes list of karotpat. Serpents may long for wings, Tea vendors can long to be kings. Like I want to be a poet Or at least a muse’s cigarette.   Cats The only creatures That don’t want to be Anything else. They are contended To be what they are.   When they are hungry They know how to get the food From you And if you don’t know What they want It’s your loss They will go And bring serpents And play with them In your bedroom.   Cats They love you So much That they will sleep Between your legs When you are asleep And go away without a word of thanks Or regret Or any sentiment silly When you wake up Loving their warmth Between your legs.   They don’t need you. You need them. Try loving a cat If you don’t believe me.   The cat’s love will make you straightforward. Brownie&

Outside Aster Paraphrasing Shelley, I may say that ‘Hell is a city much like Kochi.’ Kochi was my favourite city when I was young. I studied in a college there for five years. I walked kilometres and kilometres in that city. I cycled even more. I was in love with Kochi. Now I detest going there. I avoid Kochi as far as possible. Too much development has undone that city. Huge buildings and flyovers and the metro rail all together have made it an enormous mess. I am not a Luddite opposed to new technology and progress. Not at all. It’s just that Kochi never had the space for the kind of development that has been imposed on it. Its roads were not even wide enough for its traffic and then came the pillars of the metro rail right in their middle. The traffic crawls now on the arterial roads like the Banerjee Road and the MG Road. The gap between your vehicle and the next one is just a few inches. If you steer an inch wrongly there comes a scratch on your vehicle, if not a dent. But t

Psychologically healthy people live in the present. Many of the others live in the past. They carry history on their backs like those molluscs that carry their shells on their backs. When obstacles present themselves, these people will withdraw into history’s shells saying things like: Remember our ancient glorious history when we were nation of whatever . The plain truth is that if we look back at our real history, there is more to be ashamed of than to be proud of. Most nations have traversed inglorious paths to become what they are today. A lot of blood was spilt, women were raped, the poor were exploited and oppressed inhumanly… Even the scriptures were written to uphold the interests of certain groups only. Even our gods were subhuman! But history is often what we fabricate. For example, the entire three centuries of the Mughal reign in India can be just erased as the new history textbooks in schools are doing. Certain people whom India regarded as villains are now heroes in