Black Hole & Autumn Shadows: Books by Tomichan Matheikal

Black Hole & Autumn Shadows are two separate books by Tomichan Matheikal. Black Hole seems to be a fiction inspired from real events while Autumn Shadows is the memoir of the author.

The reason I’m talking about both the books together is that one of the protagonists of the book Black Hole has many similarities with the author. In fact, the author himself talked about it in the Preface of his memoir, Autumn Shadows.

I felt the urge to look back at my life…The urge became overwhelming particularly when I was unable to go ahead with a novel, tentatively titled Black Hole, which I began writing three years ago. What was blocking me? I asked myself. The protagonist of the novel has many similarities with me and some of my own emotional blocks were preventing the character of the protagonist from taking shape and moving ahead with the plot. Hence I decided to deal with my emotional blocks. This memoir is the result. It has a therapeutic value, if nothing else.

Cover of the Books

• 

• 

About the Author & Autumn Shadows

Tomichan Matheikal is a teacher by profession and a writer by choice. He is also an avid reader and a passionate blogger. In my knowledge, he has authored 7 books.

There’s a famous Sufi line that Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan often used in his qawwalis: 

(Zahid) Main teri maanu namaz padh lun
Tu meri maan ab sharab pi le

English translation:
(O devout) I’m going to listen to you and will pray
You, too, listen to me and drink

Tomichan is a man of experience. He has done both. He is a priest-to-be turned irreligionist. He joined seminary at the age of fifteen and reached upto the level of Brother, a kind of intermediary stage between an aspirant and a priest. He later left that path and meanwhile also got involved in alcoholism. 

Autumn Shadows deals with ups & downs of the author’s life—under which conditions he joined seminary, what led him to abandon that path & become a non-religious person, his days of alcoholism & depression and how he came out of it, etc. 

Black Hole and Autumn Shadows

The aforementioned Sufi line is often sung in qawwali, which is a form of music that often talks about drinking, and both music & drinking are prohibited in Islam, and yet the foundation of Sufism is Islam.

It reminds me of an instance from the book Black Hole, in which the wife of a pastor is telling her husband:

When he (Paul) said that Christ was the end of the Law, he was asking the people to move from the Law and rituals to faith and love. But the pastors and other religious leaders still prefer the Law. How can they keep the people subordinate otherwise?

Drinking or wine in Sufism isn’t normal drinking. It’s about being selfless. It’s about losing one’s self. It’s about falling in love. Nida Fazli put it as: 

Hosh walon ko khabar ka bekhudi kya cheez hai
Ishq kijiye fir samajhiye zindagi kya cheez hai

English translation:
What self-conscious know about what it’s like to lose one’s self
Fall in love and understand what the life is all about

Well, the author understands life through love. To know about whose love and other things, read his memoir, Autumn Shadows, in which the author talks about how insects came to die in his living room & made him wonder why those insects were born and why he was born, as insects fly towards a source of light which kills them sooner than later. This phenomenon is used in Sufism as a metaphor for the ultimate state of love.

Tomichan Matheikal says the same thing in a different manner in his novel, Black Hole:

In the beginning was a black hole.  The black hole was with God, and the black hole was God.  All things existed in the black hole.  Nothing could escape the tenacity with which the black hole held everything within it.  The bonds of that tenacity grew strong and stronger until the black hole could not bear the bondage anymore.  And it exploded.  Boom.  Big Bang.  And the black hole became flesh…The universe is an infinite black hole…It longs for love…All the while. All the way.

Characters in Black Hole

Black Hole is a multi-protagonist novel. It has a wide range of characters including Jesus Christ, Mahatma Gandhi, Hitler, Edwina Mountbatten, etc.

The story runs over a period of three generations. It begins with Kailashputar Boprai, who left his house in search of meaning & later settled in Delhi where people began to treat him like a Godman. He was succeeded by his nephew, Amarjeet Boprai, who was succeeded by his son, Nityananda. 

There’s Jane Abercrombie, a Jew who decided to visit India after reading Siddhartha by Herman Hesse & became a disciple of Kailashputar when Hitler laid siege to Poland. Aaron Matthews, a pastor of the Church of England also became Kailashputar’s disciple. Mahendra Rana also became his disciple but he was more interested in building an empire, expansion of Ashram. 

Mahendra co-founded Devlok Ashram Trust, which later took over the management of Kailash Public School in which Ishan Salman Panicker was a teacher. It not only tells the story of Ishan but his father & grandfather as well. 

Plot of Black Hole

Black Hole is a miniplot novel. Though it has many protagonists with their own story, the centre is Devlok Ashram Trust. The book is more about worldview. 

In one incident, Mary Magdalene is shown being dragged by people carrying stones in their hand. They wanted to kill her because she was a prostitute. This was the time of Jesus. In another incident, a school girl is whipped because some boy kissed her when she lifted her veil in front of him. This is the 21st century. In either case, no action was taken against men.

The book also talks about the Khasi tribe of Shillong in which matriarchy is practiced. Unlike patriarchy in which the elder son inherits the family legacy, here the youngest daughter inherits the family legacy. She is called khadduh.

There’s an incident in which a khasi woman whose husband has been missing for the past 10 years gives birth to a girl child & people are happy because they get their khadduh. No one is concerned about the father. 

On the other, a father of 8 girls in Kerala is shown wandering from one holy place to another to beget a son. You’ll find such contrast throughout the book.

Black Hole and Religion

The book Black Hole talks about various aspects of religion through different characters. You’ll find references from the Bible along with Bhagavad Gita verse in it. The author also presents the dark side of religion, such as jihads & riots in the name of religion. There is no favouritism or censorship. In fact no religion is spared. 

It mentions the killing of Hindus by Muslims, Muslims by Sikhs, and Sikhs & Muslims by Hindus. The author quotes the incident of Graham Stuart Staines and his two little sons being burnt alive in their station wagon by some Hindu fanatics. And, he also talks about the Church burning people alive merely for questioning the wrongs that had eaten into the entrails of the Church like a pernicious cancer. It also highlights inhumane practices in the name of race, such as the killings of Jews by Hitler and the assaults on Nepali immigrants by the Khasi tribe in Shillong. 

There is even a comparison of Yehwah (the God of Jews) & Hitler, as both were extremely concerned about the purity of their own race to the extent of killing. 

Style of Narration in Black Hole

The novel is fast paced. The language is easy to understand. The style is philosophic. A tinge of satire is also there. The author commented on lots of issues. Some in detail while some fleetingly. Here’s an example of a fleeting one:

 He’s doing an endless research at JNU

The author is well versed in literature. You’ll find mentions of Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha, Bhasa’s Dutavakya, and others in the book. 

Some Quotes from the Novel

• Every village loves its own idiot or its own lunatic.
• Culture is a big comedy. A comedy with which the upper classes entertain themselves at the cost of the others.
• Life’s a dance.  Very few people realise that.  For most people life is a marketplace where trade takes place relentlessly.  Merciless bargains.
• You will beg forgiveness of HIM because your big ego won’t permit you to ask pardon from the person whom you actually hurt.
• He thought that the remedy for lust was chastity whereas it is love.