Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Dawn was the most reliable colleague I ever had. She was the paragon of commitment. If she took up a responsibility, she would go out of her way to perfect the output. We worked in the same department at Sawan Public School, Delhi. One of our many duties in that exclusively residential school was preparing students for such interschool competitions as debate, declamation, etc. Whenever I needed help with such tasks, I fell back on Dawn. Very few people are so entirely reliable. We were happy colleagues for over a decade doing a lot of things together like directing the English play for the school’s annual day, anchoring sports events, organising inter-house competitions related to our subject. There existed a rare camaraderie between us that made the tasks all too easy. There were moments when I thought she overestimated me because of which she suppressed her dissent with my way of carrying out certain duties and activities. Almost a decade after we parted from each other, I once d

His was the most disarming smile I ever came across among the staff of Sawan school. Let’s call him Chetan. He always carried a small comb in the back pocket of his trousers though there was hardly any hair on his head. The few strands that grew on either side were combed over the glaring baldness in spite of their intractable rebellion against the attempt. Even while conversing with you, he would take out the comb and indulge in the mechanical act which could have been avoided because his smile would keep you so transfixed that you wouldn’t really notice his baldness. In my very first conversation with him on the campus of Sawan, he mentioned that there were mountains not too far if I missed them. I had just told him that I was working in Shillong before landing in Delhi. “Meghalaya, the land of beautiful hills!” He exclaimed with childlike excitement. “The Aravalli here may not be a match but they aren’t bad either if you’re interested.” “How far? Can I reach it by scooter?” My

He was the most stylishly dressed man on the campus. Let me call him Balram. He wore modish trousers and shirt during the day and immaculately white kurta-pyjama in the evenings. His kurta differed from everyone else’s; it was half-sleeve and much smaller than the traditional ones. Later, I used to wonder whether Mr Narendra Modi adopted the style of his kurta from Balram. In my first days on the campus of Sawan residential school in Delhi, Balram was always seen swirling a car key on the index finger of his right hand which was held high. “Do you know why he’s doing that?” Anand asked me one day. “Showing off, I guess,” I said. “As if he is the uncrowned king here,” Anand said with unconcealed contempt. In a year’s time, Anand bought a Maruti 800 car which was what Balram had too. Most teachers in Sawan had two-wheelers at that time. Eventually almost everyone had a car. Towards the end, when Sawan was being killed by a religious cult (more on that later), Balram bought a c

Anand was a good storyteller. We walked for years on the Mehrauli-Bhatti Mines Road in Delhi in the evenings. He was a good friend while we both were teaching at Sawan Public School. What drew me to him was his ability to create stories out of very ordinary mundane things that happened at school. These stories had a unique touch of humour, one which mingled subtlety, sarcasm and slapstick in just the right proportion. Anand would laugh hilariously at his own stories after delivering the punchline. My laughter was always subdued because life had smothered much of my ability to laugh before I reached Delhi. It was during one of those walks that Anand told me the story of his being hijacked for a short period in his home state of Haryana. He was driving to a destination that was new to him. Those were days when the Google map was not available yet. So he was forced to stop at a particular junction to enquire about the way. “I’m also going to that place,” the man on the roadside said

Book Review Title: Ananta Jeevanam Author: Kolakaluri Enoch Publisher: Ratna Books, Delhi, 2023 Pages: 308 You can live like a dictator and enjoy the delights of power over other people. You may think you are a great person when you see others cower before you. You think their fear is their respect for you. But when your end is near and you become a helpless person, you will see the people’s colour change. Their fear becomes contempt for you. You will now see with terror the smug smiles on their faces as they watch you die in pain and helplessness. Kolakaluri Enoch’s novel, Ananta Jeevanam , translated from Telugu by the author himself, tells the story of three brothers who lived luxurious lives and enjoyed tremendous powers over people. They were apparently happy too. But their lives did not end quite happily. Though these three brothers play dominant roles in the novel, the book is also the story of Anantapur, a district in Rayalaseema, Andhra Pradesh. This rain shado

Today is Holy Saturday for Christians all over the world. Yesterday was Good Friday which my blog commemorated in a post titled Good Friday and Some Arithmetic . My enduring friend Jose Maliekal commented on the post thus:  I take Maliekal seriously for many reasons. So I spent some time thinking about Holy Saturday and what descended into my consciousness was a profound silence, the silence of a tomb, a tomb that held the dead body of a young man whose goodness could not survive in the world of powerful people. That is the helplessness of Holy Saturday. True, Easter will follow it. What follows Easter, however, will be yet another religion, its mumbo-jumbo and the inevitable power games. I’d prefer the silence of Holy Saturday. You’re right, Maliekal, Arikuzha’s nights are silent, eerily so. [ For the benefit of other readers, Arikuzha is my village .] I miss the sounds of crickets that used to resound in the nights here until a decade back. Development, Vikas, has driven away eve

Two and two is not always equal to four, my young friend Tony says. 2 + 2 ≠ 4, he reasserts. Tony doesn’t think linearly though his thinking has the precision of mathematical logic. See these two, Tony offers an illustration, Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. Then add another 2 to them, Ambani and Adani. What do you get? I smile in answer. It’s dangerous to answer Tony verbally. Now, Tony continues, let’s take two beggars from the street. And then add you and me, another two, to them. What do you get? Tony goes on with more arithmetic because he thinks I didn’t get it. (Modi + Shah) + (Ambani + Adani) = 4 persons (Beggar 1 + Beggar 2) + (You + I) = 4 persons Is the first 4 equal to the second 4? T oday is Good Friday. Good Fridays are sad because they are about the victory of vicious political power over simple goodness. Just a few days back, on what’s known as Palm Sunday among Christians, Jesus was led like a hero to Jerusalem, a political fulcrum in those days, by a hu