KOCHI: He is a living victim of the most brutal terror attack in the state that shook Keralites the world over. For retired professor T J Joseph, the trauma of the attack continues to be an irremovable scar. The pain he endured over the course of his life is taking shape as a memoir. DC Books is in the final stages of discussion with him to publish the same.
It was on July 4, 2010 that Joseph, then a professor at Newman College, Thodupuzha, was attacked by a group of Popular Front of India (PFI) activists, who chopped off his right palm for preparing a question paper for the degree examination, that claimed to have defamed Prophet Mohammed.
“It’s a question paper that I prepared for my students that changed my life. The book will etch my life thereon and how the attack debased my family, career and life,” he said.
Joseph has been working on the book for quite some time and he will be finishing it in the next three months. “I have been in discussion with DC Books for publishing it and they have given a positive nod to it,” he said. The book will unravel the tragic events that followed the attack and the agony he continued to suffer after the death of his wife Salomi. She had committed suicide in 2014.
His expulsion from the college following the attack and the period from his reinstatement to retirement will figure prominently in the book.