Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Some of my prized possessions in my youth were a dictionary, a thesaurus and a pronouncing dictionary.  The grammar book belonged to boyhood days.  The pronouncing dictionary of Daniel Jones which still finds a place –though a relegated one – in my book shelf is a 1979 edition.  I bought it in 1980 or so when the phone number in my hometown was a three-digit figure.  It was used as frequently in those days as my dictionary and the thesaurus (the latter of which I bought when I was 16).  I was quite fastidious about lexical and grammatical precision and even style. My obsession with words sometimes landed me in ridiculous situations because I teetered on the edge of malapropism often enough to attract derision from certain people who found me clownish enough to be amusing.  It took me a while to understand that it’s not words that make one’s writing attractive; it’s convictions and their depth. Time of 3-digit phone number  Today the dictionary, the thesaurus and the pro

Rowing on The highest form of inspiration has the signature of love somewhere in it.  Even a great intellectual giant like Albert Einstein had love in his neurons.  His love, however, was not confined to a few individual human beings; it encompassed the whole cosmos.  When he said that "there are only two ways to live your life” one of which is “as though nothing is a miracle” and “the other is as though everything is a miracle,” his love for the cosmos is what came across.  The cosmos was a miracle for him.  He loved it.  His love led to his theories born out of his ardent desire to understand what he loved so much.  Novelist Joseph Conrad could not have mapped the dark depths of the human heart had he not been inspired by love of human beings.  “Men alone are quite capable of every wickedness,” he knew.  But he also knew that men alone could seek themselves in the work they do.  What makes a man great is not the work he does, Conrad would have said, but discovering him

Read the report here “Oh God, it’s getting tougher and tougher!” I mumbled to myself as I finished reading about the latest reform being imposed on the nation by the government . “Really?  I thought you didn’t believe in god.”  I looked around and saw no one.  Yet I was sure I heard the voice.  There was a chuckle then. “ Oh God is just an exclamation I use like alas or Oh I see and nothing more,” I said to test the voice. “I see,” said the voice.  “Anyway, what’s getting tougher and tougher?  You sound quite frustrated.” “Who are you?” I was dismayed obviously. “You called god and here am I.” “God?” “Well, some people call me that.  People like to call me by a lot of names.” “You mean you’re real!” “As real as you.” “If you are really real, how do you put up with all the nonsense perpetrated in your name by people?” “Do I have a choice?” “What kind of a god is it without a choice?” “You are a writer.  Do you have a choice ab

Book Review “I see you.  But you don’t see me.”  The villain of Clare Mackintosh’s novel, I See You , says that.  This villain is one who sells the profiles of women – fairly attractive ones though he knows that attractiveness is a subjective attribute – to prospective buyers.  It is a remunerative online business which gives a profile picture of the woman along with certain details like how she looks, her approximate age and where one can find her usually.  Many of the women eventually become victims of assault, rape and even murder.  It would appear that there are too many men without anything much to do except stalk women. The story is narrated partly by Zoe Walker [first person narrative] who is shocked to see her photo in a newspaper advertisement which merely mentions a website and a phone number.  Soon Zoe discovers that she is one of the many women whose profiles are available online to potential clients.  The other half of the story is narrated by Kelly Swift, a polic

Three Muslim girls wearing the hijab and dancing in a public place kicked up too much unsavoury controversy in Kerala.  The irony is that until a few days ago these same men from the Muslim community in the state were vociferously supporting a girl who converted from Hinduism to Islam in order to marry a Muslim youth whose personal credentials are allegedly tainted with IS connections.  When Akhila became Hadiya, the Muslim community called it personal freedom.  When three Muslim girls danced as part of an AIDS day awareness programme, it became a sign of the Armageddon .  Such double standards make religion absurd.  If you advocate personal freedom when someone leaves her religion and joins yours, why can’t you permit the same personal freedom to girls of your own religion who dance for a social cause? Why would three girls dancing bring the Armageddon on the earth?  The plain answer is that the menfolk want their women to hide themselves behind the veil, behind the burqa,

Sometimes the society gifts me an identity crisis.  My association with the society is usually limited to my workplace and that being a school there is little problem.  [I must admit that I get an enviably fantastic set of students year after year.]  However, when I meet people occasionally in certain gatherings like wedding or funeral, friends and relatives often introduce me to others as a fiercely anti-BJP blogger.  That has always embarrassed me. When I look at my blog posts, I find that politics is a rare subject in my writing.  I write short stories, book reviews and reflections on life much more than politics.  Yet I get labelled as “fiercely anti-BJP” probably because I articulate my political views without the sweetening additive of diplomacy.  Lack of diplomacy has always been my nemesis, my lifelong companion.  That’s one of the reasons why I chose to stay away from the society.  I’m incapable of sweetening harsh facts.  Light doesn’t terrorise me and I’m incapab

One of my old colleagues in Delhi shared the above in his Facebook space today.  I was amused.  I controlled my amusement with a hearty laugh.  I did not comment.  In fact, I stopped commenting on the posts made by many of my Delhi friends because they are not even fit to be counted as jokes.  Blatant lies, that’s what they are.  But my friends in Delhi and other parts of North India believe they are truths.  In fact, these are ‘truths’ fabricated by BJP after it came to power in Delhi three and a half years ago.  I’m taking this as an example.  Just one out of the innumerable lies foisted on the nation as historical truths by the ruling party.  Knowledgeable people will ignore these.  At best, they will have hearty laughs like me.  I too kept on ignoring them.  But I was aghast when some of my students in Kerala (where I teach now) started taking some of these posts seriously.  This blog post is for their sake.  Beware, my young friends.  There is a lot of falsehood being fois

Having just finished reading M T Vasudevan Nair’s Malayalam novel, രണ്ടാമൂഴം [ The Second Turn ], I wonder whether the award-winning novel would have been written today.  It was written in 1984 and went on to receive more than 50 reprints in Malayalam, let alone the translations.  The fate of movies like Padmavati makes me think that the novel would have attracted much controversy had it been published today. However, the novel is being made into a movie, the most expensive non-English movie with a budget of $155 million [INR 1000 crore].  Maybe India will be a different country by 2021, the year in which the movie will be completed, and the movie won’t court undue controversy.  The novel takes quite an unorthodox look at the Mahabharata. Bhima is the narrator and in his perspective no character is divine or even unduly superhuman.  Even Krishna appears as just another warrior and king of a small kingdom.  Bhishma gets hardly any importance since Bhima had little to do wit

Fiction “I can get you arrested for attempting to bribe a government officer,” Alex said imperiously to the man sitting in front of him. The man had come to get his contribution to the Labourers’ Welfare Fund assessed.  “One percent of the total cost of construction is the legal amount,” Alex had told him.  “I have assessed the cost of the construction of your house as ₹70 lakh.  So you have to contribute ₹70,000 to the Labourers’ Welfare Fund.” The man pleaded with Alex to reduce the cost of construction to ₹40 lakh.  “₹10,000 will be yours,” the man said sotto voce.  After threatening the man with imprisonment, Alex threw a glance at Leela who sat at the next table.  Leela was Alex’s colleague.  “Isn’t she impressed with my honesty?”  Leela pretended not to have heard anything and carried on with her work. It didn’t matter, of course.  His honesty was not meant to impress anyone.  He was an honest officer unlike other government officers.  He had an exemplary se

Historians are not sure whether Padmavati is a mere legend or a historical figure.  That doesn’t matter either.  Objective truth is not the concern of most people.  People want convenient truths.  People want truths that serve their practical purposes.  Most religious truths belong to that category.  Padmavati is also one such expedient truth.  What is that truth?  I am Rani Padmavati, the Queen of Chittor.  People call me the Queen of Beauty.  I have never understood why our men bother about beauty at all.  They are warriors and love fighting. Bravery, physical strength and honour are the values they really cherish and want all of us to possess.  We cherish beauty too.  But we’d prefer to keep beauty veiled behind the purdah.  If anyone other than the husband dares to raise the purdah, he will be killed.  Beauty is a private property among us.  We, the women, are our men’s private properties. That is how my story of Padmavati began, a story which I wrote when the cont

When children rush in where adults fear to tread, there is cause for concern.  Children are committing suicide for reasons as silly as being scolded by parents or teachers.  Children are committing crimes which adults would find repulsive.  Why is innocence fleeing from children? Germaine Greer described the library as “a place where you can lose your innocence without losing your virginity.”  The library is a treasure house of knowledge and information.  The library brings to you heroes and villains, notions and perversions, the saint and the sinner.  The library opens your inner eye and reveals the hidden secrets of the world.  While knowledge is a priceless treasure, it is also potential terror.  That is why the biblical God asked Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit of knowledge.  Today children are exposed to a tremendous lot of information which most of them are not able to handle effectively.  The mobile phone with internet connection, the social media and the television

Hogenakkal in Tamil Nadu bordering Karnataka is a place where rocks and water interplay to produce a unique symphony of nature.  Water keeps gushing from all around into a lake in which coracles (small round rafts) carrying tourists dance blissfully to the rhythms of the nature’s symphony.   I visited the place the other day with a group of students.  It was an awesome experience.  The rocks that tower all around you like a mammoth fortress look like a phenomenal sculpture.  Water has created its own unique artwork in those carbonatite rocks.  One can spend hours admiring the beauty of those rocks.  You can admire the waterfalls all around if you prefer.  The place is also described as the Niagara Falls of India because of the number of waterfalls that straddle the rocks.  I love water.  In fact, it’s quite a love affair that I share with water.  Water embraces you totally.  It engulfs you.  It swallows you.  But love affairs are private and I didn’t jump into the wate

There was a period in my life when I regarded myself as the personification of perfection.  When I grew out of it I realised that the pretension was a subconscious ploy to conceal the painful conflicts within.  It took years and a lot of people’s relentless jabs and prods for me to come to terms with the insecurity feelings that haunted my inner being like a bloodsucking vampire.  When I exorcised the vampire from my being, I found myself withdrawing from society altogether.  I realised with some horror how unfit I was in the society: incapable of understanding people’s underlying motives and meanings and hence incapable of dealing with them without hurting myself.  Solitude becomes a soothing balm when you learn to accept it as your co-traveller.  There’s a young friend, however, who draws out words from me occasionally.  During one of the long conversations I had with this friend, I asked, “What is there in common between you and me that holds us together?”  Pat came th

Image Courtesy imdb Hardik Patel’s personal life has been made ‘viral’ by certain holier-than-thou Indians.  If anything, it underscores the hypocrisy that accompanies the Indian mindset like a holy cow. India is a country that is governed by people with heinous criminal records.  We have no qualms about accepting as our heroes people who are worse swindlers than mafia dons.  Mass murderers are elevated to the stature of gods and temples are constructed for them.  But when it comes to sex, we have a quaint sense of morality. Even Nehru has been drawn into the controversy and parallel are drawn between that great personality and Hardik Patel who is yet to prove anything except rabble-rousing skills.  Some BJP leaders even went to the ridiculous extent of posting pictures of Nehru hugging his own sister to show that he was a sex maniac.  Nehru might have had extramarital affairs.  Extramarital affairs are not justifiable as they pose serious threats to family bonds and

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.