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Tomichan Matheikal
under Love & Relationships

Feelings are Snowballs

Illustrations by Copilot Designer Feelings are like snowballs. They make a small start as minor emotions or subtle reactions. Unless they are brought under the control of rational thought, they are likely to intensify as we dwell on them or as new experiences amplify them. It’s just like the snowball picking up more snow on the way and growing bigger. And bigger. That big snowball gathers greater momentum as it hurtles down the hill. Soon it will acquire an unstoppable energy. Quit.....

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Tomichan Matheikal
under Love & Relationships

My New Years

Each New Year of mine was invariably overshadowed by the preceding Christmas. My entire childhood was lived out in a remote and nondescript village of central Kerala where electricity arrived when I was in high school. New Year meant nothing more to the villagers than the replacement of the old wall calendar with a new one. Just like the earth which went on revolving around the sun without ever knowing the human markers of time, the villagers continued the.....

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Tomichan Matheikal
under Love & Relationships

Butterfly from Sambhal

“Weren’t you a worm till the other day?” The plant asks the butterfly. “That’s ancient history,” the butterfly answers. “Why don’t you look at the present reality which is much more beautiful?” “How can I forget that past?” The plant insists. “You ate almost all my leaves. Had not my constant gardener discovered your ravage in time and removed you from my frail limbs, I would have been dead long before you emerged fr.....

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Tomichan Matheikal
under Love & Relationships

Nishagandhi – Queen of the Night

Finally one of my Nishagandhis has bloomed. Here’s the picture. I have four pots of this plant which is quite exotic as its very name implies. Belonging to the Cactaceae family, this flower goes by different names. The Indian name ‘Nishagandhi’ comes from two Sanskrit words: nisha = night & gandh: fragrance. This flower blooms in the night and wilts as dawn breaks. I took the above pic just before sunrise this morning. I have waited for nearly half a year now fo.....

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Tomichan Matheikal
under Love & Relationships

Cats and Love

No less a psychologist than Freud said that the “time spent with cats is never wasted.” I find time to spend with cats precisely for that reason. They are not easy to love, particularly if they are the country variety which are not quite tameable, and mine are those. What makes my love affair with my cats is precisely their unwillingness to befriend me. They’d rather be in their own company. “In ancient time, cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten thi.....

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Tomichan Matheikal
under Love & Relationships

Trapped in Pandora’s Shadows

I wanted this to be a guest post from a former student. However, getting this poem from Anjana Alphons George wasn’t quite easy. So this is going to be a hybrid of the guest and the host coming together like the waves and the intertidal zone in the ocean. “I’ve become your fan,” I said to Anjana. She was in grade 10. I wasn’t teaching her since my classes were confined to grades 11 and 12. It was a few years back. Anjana had delivered a.....

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Tomichan Matheikal
under Love & Relationships

My Favourite Festival

Festivals ceased to charm me once I grew out of childhood. Crowds are the souls of festivals and I detest crowds. A crowd doesn’t have a mind. It is a leviathan full of passion and energy. All brawn and no brain. All too often I am driven to the conclusion that festivals are so popular precisely because they don’t require anyone to think anything worthwhile and people don’t like to think. There is one festival, however, that I have always looked forward to with good chee.....

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Tomichan Matheikal
under Love & Relationships

Punny Sunday

Puns are generally kiddish. But sometimes they can be super-intelligent too. Like some of the jokes forwarded by this friend. Taste a few: I think I’m becoming a social vegan… I’m avoiding meets. I married my wife for her looks. Just not the ones she’s been giving.....

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Tomichan Matheikal
under Love & Relationships

Love is a difficult and serious affair

Sleep eludes me. It happens these days. I can hear missiles roaring in Lebanon, the Promised Land of erstwhile days, the land whose cedar trees built Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. It could be from Ukraine that the roars came. The Great Terminator of Ukraine is now threatening to use nuclear bombs to ensure his victory. His victory! One man’s victory is the defeat of millions of people. One man makes a lot of difference. There is this one man who is giving an interview to a.....

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Tomichan Matheikal
under Love & Relationships

Waiting for my Champak to bloom

My Champak tree grows by leaps and bounds. It is now 70+ feet tall in my estimate. When I planted it in 2016, it was a sapling not even half a foot tall. A colleague of mine from school gave it to me on the occasion of Environment Day when the Forest department of the state distributed all sorts of saplings in schools. This colleague had picked up a few saplings one of which was this champak. Then someone told her that champak was an ill omen in homes. So s.....

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Tomichan Matheikal
under Love & Relationships

Pip learns the essential lessons

Charles Dickens does not appear in the list of my favourite novelists, notwithstanding the fact that he is an admirable story-teller. He weaves fantastic plots with too much happening at any time. There are all sorts of characters in his works. There is no dearth of melodrama and sentiments, and even the grotesque. In spite of all that, Dickens remains at a considerable distance from my affections. I think the problem is that his characters become conventional.....

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Tomichan Matheikal
under Love & Relationships

Death and Dignity

The last of my maternal uncles breathed his last yesterday. A cousin of mine has been tethered to a ventilator today after a fall. The uncle was 93. The cousin must be around 80. I am 64. I have lived twice as long as an average Indian of 1947. When India wrested independence from the British, the average life expectancy of an Indian was 32. Today the average life expectancy in India is 70 years, according to Macrotrends. My uncle, who was a teacher by profession, defied the national stat.....

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