Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Fiction Solomon stared at the message.  It is not often that a message comes traversing twenty years and makes your heart skip a beat.  No, the message was not twenty years old.  He had had no contact whatever with the sender of that message for twenty years.  In those days, twenty years ago, she was a symphony that flowed through his veins. “You made me pass English.  Remember the guidebook you gave me?  And the tricks you suggested?  I passed English because of that.  Otherwise I wouldn’t be the teacher that I am today.  Thanks.  Sangeeta.” Solomon read the message again and again.  His heart pulsated faster and faster.  The heartbeats struggled to recreate a familiar symphony from the mounting feeling of nostalgia. Does she remember only the guidebook and his tricks for passing an exam?  Have you forgotten the math exam in which you showed me some answers so that I passed?  Your roll number just preceded mine and we were sitting on the same bench for the exam. 

Is Capitalism collapsing under its own weight?  German thinker Wolfgang Streeck believes it is.  He has written a book about it: How Will Capitalism End?   I don’t think I’ll read that book because the only review I read says that “it makes for tough reading.”  Though I don’t really mind tough books, economics is not my cup of tea. Capitalism has weakened many systems that people would like to have.  By nurturing individualism, it has weakened society.  Its cutthroat competition has weakened human cooperation.  By subjugating everything to money and trade, it has weakened human values as well as political systems.  Yes, the trader is more powerful today than the politician, thanks to capitalism.  That’s a situation which the shrewd politician won’t like at least though right now we have the politician and the trader colluding with each other. Streeck argues that the weakening of social and political systems has generated five systemic disorders: “stagnation, oligarchic redi

Jesus bequeathed heaven to children.  “Let little children come to me,” he said, “theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  If he meant the heaven that awaits the faithful after death, that place must be quite vacant.   Childhood itself is the heaven.  Did Jesus mean that?  I don’t know.  I’d like to think so.  To expect adults to retain childlike innocence is mere wishful thinking.  Even a god cannot afford to be so impractical.  The child’s innocence is quite ruthless.  A four year-old boy was waiting for his father the other day in my school after classes.  I went and sat near him as I was waiting for my wife who teaches in the same school.  During the innocent, casual conversation I struck with him, the boy stared at my hair and asked, “Why is your hair so white-white?” “Time has dyed it white,” I said naughtily, “Isn’t it stylish?” “No,” he said emphatically without a moment’s hesitation.  His body language, a vigorous shirk of the shoulders and the nod of the head w

My Queen, Walk into my wax palace And peer into my eyes. Words will melt away As the lamps will light themselves On their pedestals And the wax won’t melt away. The bow will play on the taut violin strings, And a whole orchestra will resonate In the background, gently, lovingly. The chalices will fill themselves. We will drink with our eyes. The angels of love will blush Behind the lamps on wax pedestals; The demons of darkness Will blink from yonder. My Queen, Walk into my wax palace Where words have no role to play.

Fiction Harry woke up with a tremor that shook his entire body.   Somebody was walking outside.   Every footfall was as clearly audible as the tick of the old clock in his living room.   The yard all around his house was paved with gravel.   Footfalls and gravel have a unique affinity with each other.   Harry got out of the bed after listening to the footfalls for a while.   They had approached his bedroom and receded eventually without ever pausing.   Someone had just walked through his yard in the middle of the night.   What’s the time?   He asked himself.   His mobile phone showed 1.24.   It was pitch dark outside.   The silence of the darkness weighed on Harry ominously.   The footfalls had stopped.   A dog in the neighbouring house, beyond Harry’s rubber trees, began to bark furiously.   Another dog joined the exercise.   Harry’s neighbour had two dogs.   Both of them were barking as if to outsmart each other. The dogs gave up eventually.   Silence r