Ever since his short story Kaliyezhuthu appeared in in a recent issue of Mathrubhumi weekly, writer N Prabhakaran has been at the receiving end. Fed up with threat calls and messages, he has almost stopped answering his phone.

For the past few days, they (a section of teachers and writers) have been heaping abuses on him, threatened to break his hands and legs for writing a short story that portrayed the cluster meetings for the teachers allegedly in a bad light, said the writer. "Ironically, majority of the criticisms were from those who talked at length about tolerance and freedom of expression and what is even more worrying was that response from some teachers who verbally abused me," said the writer.

"There were many instances where woman teachers complained that the so-called games as part of the cluster meeting to develop teaching methodology have erotic connotations and there were often sexual exploitation as part of that," he said.