Humpty Dumpty's 10 Hats by Tomichan Matheikal

The title of the book and the cover page were what intrigued me a lot to start reading the book of short stories. Humpty dumpty is a nursery rhyme character that I always felt bad for, as a child. Even today, when I hear (or see) the rhyme, it makes me wonder why the illustration of Humpty Dumpty was egg like? This visual representation painted by the rhyme gives a very gory image of the person – Humpty Dumpty - as the progresses. The phrase 10 Hats… though Humpty Dumpty also wore a hat in the illustrations, this brought the image of the Mad Hatter and the White Rabbit, from Alice in Wonderland – probably the result of the cover image where a woman is walking towards a grand archway that looked like a gateway into another world…. Rightly so. 

Cover page of Humpty Dumpty's 10 Hats by Tomichan Matheikal

The 10 short stories transported me into a different world than my home, through its narration. It elicited a rainbow of emotions, feelings of fear, smile, laughter, awe, affection, love and more. While this was for the words that one reads, each story has layers to them highlighting the societal hypocrisy, duality, reality in each of the events that unfold. The people in the short stories feel like they were one among us, our family, friends, neighbours, conmen, godmen, and leaders whom we might know, and probably also met in our real life, who think like us, and sometimes we might probably also see a reflection of ourselves in one or more of the characters from these stories. Some we might accept while some we might be against. It was pleasure to read names that I have been used to hearing from my everyday life, experience the beauty (and eeriness of) locations that I have visited with family and friends during my school excursions and family vacations, all over again.

My favourite story from the 10 short stories was Phantoms on a Desert. I loved the way in which it brought out the uncanny similarities of emotions, needs, and behaviours of two people who were poles apart even with respect to their gender (among other things), which highlights the stark reality of life, that underneath all those layers of exhibitionism, barriers & boundaries, wants & needs, likes & dislike, at our core, we all are one and the same, especially when we are at the safety and security needs level in Maslow’s theory of hierarchy. The other reason why I loved this short story was the coinage of the words Musanghies & Kirshangies. This is the first time I am hearing these words and the explanation for them had me in splits, pulling me completely out of the fear/horror that I was still experiencing after reading the first two stories (just before retiring for the night). 

After a long while, I was motivated to read through a book, without wanting to break away from it for any reason. It was an absolute pleasure to read the narrative style of the fiction stories that brought out political, societal, and communal lack of standards, the mind and it’s complex working, the beautiful shades of people that we come across in our everyday life – good, bad, ugly and the myriad of other variations across these three. 

I would surely go back to these short stories more than once, and maybe it might also become a bedtime read that I would read with my children too whenever that happens (now that they are older and overlap time for bedtime reads have considerably reduced).

This e-book, Humpty Dumpty's 10 Hats, has been published as part of the #BlogchatterEbook carnival 2022 and can be downloaded at - https://www.theblogchatter.com/download/humpty-dumptys-10-hats-by-tomichan-matheikal 

My book - Free Rein to Thoughts - is also part of this Ebook carnival. 

This blog is part of the #BlogchatterEbook carnival & #TBRChallenge