Amballore House

by Thekkumthala, Jose

  ***

  When I woke up from my dream, I was alone on the upper deck. The rest of the crowd was done with the feast and were engrossed in cultural programs on the lower deck. I walked down the deck to join the carnival-like crowd.

  14A LONG GOOD-BYE

  When I boarded the jumbo jet of Singapore Airlines back to Canada, my mind was preoccupied with thoughts of Kerala.

  It was hard to say good-bye to Kerala once more. I said a long good-bye to her. I was not sure how long it would take to touch its soil again—it might take years and years.

  It is impossible to totally forget Kerala, however long one had been away from its soil and however intently one had assimilated with another culture. While cruising down the runway prior to being airborne, looking at plantain tree leaves stirring in the breeze, and seeing a long line of palm trees that bedecked the airport, I was in the company of many people in the plane, who probably had the same feelings. We were all bonded by the same culture and by the same memories, and nursing the same sorrows of departure from a cherished land.

  Some of us probably did not know what we were getting into, when we decided years ago, to leave Kerala once and for all. The joy, the passion, and the fervor that underscored our first trip outside India deceptively clouded the reality of a bondage being severely severed, irreparably damaged, and never to be the same ever again.

  It took a rare comeback visit to suddenly be jolted into the world of forgotten fantasies of the childhood and the adolescence. The euphoria of being overwhelmed by memories which consumed one’s mind was itself a reward of that visit. Those memories drew one unfailingly to his native roots. They tugged at one’s heartstrings.

  It was too late now to reverse that decision; it was impossible to go back in time and change that choice—a choice that changed my very life forever. I knew that I would have to live with that decision and its consequences for as long as I breathed.

  I was soon airborne, and Kerala became smaller and smaller as I looked out through the window of the jumbo jet. Looking down, I realized that Kerala was in the hands of a new generation, a generation called social media generation, a generation that I was unfamiliar with, a totally different generation from the one which inhabited it when I flew out last time.

  Kerala soon became a tiny green land beside the Arabian Sea, nestled at the footsteps of the imposing Western Ghats. The waves were lashing against the coast, forming foamy bubbles brimming with life. They bid me good-bye and I to them.

  When the plane soared high, taking me beyond the blanket of white clouds, Kerala was no more visible. But I trusted that there was a Kerala beneath me. I had a blind faith that she would always be there, waiting patiently for me to return, prompting me to dive down from the sky above to pierce through the thick clouds and reappear during a future trip. I trusted that she would always beckon me to her shores, though invisible, igniting my passion to visit her, and to breathe her air. I trusted that she would take my place in my absence, to witness her own mesmerizing beauty, and to tell me all about it when I would meet her again.

  I somehow felt that Kerala was more vivid than ever, while I was above the clouds, in spite of being eclipsed by the opaque cotton wool layer. I felt that she was trying to tie me to her through invisible strings of bondage, and was reassuring me that she was already missing me. I felt that she promised me that she would always wait for me under the clouds. I felt that she reminded me that she should always have a special place in my heart.

  The trip was tantalizing enough to lure me back to its soil again sometime in the future. But, for now, life had to go on. I headed to Canada, which was beckoning me to reality.

  Kerala stayed with me as a dream.

  PART II

  THE

  EXTRATERRESTRIALS

  1THE DISAPPEARANCE

  Thoma’s parents, Vareed and Eli belonged to the Amballore dynasty, a tribe that genealogists at Amballore University were able to trace all the way back to the origin of Kerala civilization. They both disappeared on the same day of the same month in the year 1958, puzzling their children, friends, neighbors, and the Amballore Police Department. They vanished into thin air. They disappeared off the face of the earth. Just like that. No one had a clue what happened.

  They were both born in Amballore in the year 1887. This placed them both at 71 when they disappeared.

  Vareed had psychic powers. He could call out a snake from its underground abode by imposing his will on it. He was seen mollifying a raging snake to save its unfortunate prey, be it a mouse, a bird, or a small child who accidentally stepped on it.

  The English name of Vareed was George, representing the venerated Saint George of the Catholic Church, who was reputed to have slain the dragon. There was widespread acclaim that Vareed was given a very appropriate name, in acknowledgement of his ability to submit a snake, or dragon, to his will. He had power over evil. He had supernatural power.

  Vareed was a simple man of small size, very unassuming and far from the imposing figure of Saint George, who rode on a horse to slay dragons. He made up for his physical limitations through supernatural powers that extended far beyond calling out intimidating snakes.

  The folklore of Amballore is filled with references to Vareed, who many a time operated in the blurry world between the living and the dead. He was a masterful craftsman, wheeling and dealing with the afterlife. Some conferred on him the title of archdeacon in the church of black magic that Kerala was famous for. However, some in town believed that he operated in the world of white magic, miraculously bringing peace into people’s lives. It was a matter of opinion if he was good or evil; the fact of the matter was that no one fully understood who Vareed was.

  Legend has it that some corpses in Amballore’s Saint Joseph’s Church cemetery were summoned by Vareed to address questions they left behind when they died. If anyone carried a bag of mysteries to the grave and assumed that he or she could leave the stage of life with unanswered questions and lead a peaceful life in the grave, he had it all wrong. That person should have known that he or she had it coming, thanks to Vareed. The graveyard inmates lived in fear that they might resurrect to face Vareed’s wrath. He was known as the tormentor of the dead. He did not let them rest in peace, even though that was the promise they carried with them when they died—RIP.

  In recognition of his supernatural abilities, Vareed was nicknamed snake charmer by Amballore citizens.

  Vareed’s wife - Thoma’s mother - was Eli, who was a formidable woman. Tall, slim, and elegantly beautiful in her younger days, Eli was the talk of the town. Born with a rare leadership quality, Eli could become intimidating if she wanted to, irrespective of who she came in contact with. Her overpowering personality instilled fear in many Amballoreans. She was the only one whom Vareed could not tame.

  Vareed confessed to his sister after his marriage that Eli was worse than a dragon and that he himself lived in fear of being slain by her, just like the dragon lived in fear of Saint George. His psychic power was his only hope to live in peace with Eli. She was one of a kind.

  Eli terrified those around her right from her cradle. The midwife who delivered Eli never forgot the day of delivery. Eli, unlike other babies when they were born, did not cry. Instead, she let out a demonic, piercing scream that was so loud and shrill that it scared the hell out of her mother and the midwife. The scream terrified other babies and in the maternity ward, and they started wailing as soon as Eli started screaming. Her mother thought that she gave birth to a demon. Her father—who was waiting in the hallway outside the delivery theater in anticipation of a tender cry signaling the arrival of a newborn infant, his ear cocked against the closed door—hit the low ceiling as he involuntarily jumped from his standstill position as he heard the demonic scream. The crowd waiting outside with him on that happy occasion spread the news around Amballore that Eli’s father peed in his mundu as the scream burst out of the delivery room.

  Eli was not just born; she erupted from her mother,
like a volcano.

  In terms of the vocal octave range, she was reputed to have surpassed today’s legends like Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston and any notable soprano one could think of.

  It was customary in those days to hire an astrologer to see into the future of a newborn. A certain astrologer who was hired on Eli’s volcanic arrival predicted that she would one day become a famous soprano. This, however, never happened. Instead of becoming a musical phenomenon that could easily have mesmerized the audience through her stellar performance in the Kerala Symphony Orchestra, Eli increased the noise level of Amballore through loud quarrels. She easily defeated other women in shouting matches, especially when she was going to church in a group of pious parishioners on Sunday mornings. Eli was usually drunk when she gravitated towards the holy building.

  On a certain Sunday morning, on the way to church, she got drunk in her favorite toddy shop. Later on in the church, in the middle of the ongoing Mass, she walked to the podium insanely drunk and started delivering Sunday’s sermon, totally uninvited. This act of public speech in the Catholic Church was to have been done by none other than the representative of Saint Peter, the priest himself. In those days of old, no one, especially no female, was supposed to enter the church stage where Mass was celebrated, let alone deliver the Sunday sermon.

  The surprised priest and the shocked parishioners and indignant worshippers, alarmed at Eli tarnishing the sanctity of the ritual, grabbed her by the elbow and threw her out through the open door onto the rain-soaked asphalt. She claimed that she landed on all fours like a cat, proving that she had nine lives. She subsequently outlived all the men who tossed her out into the raging rain that day.

  Eli’s stamina and physical strength were so extraordinary that she became an Amballore legend. She beat the competition in coconut tree-climbing championship. The competition consisted of climbing a tall palm tree all the way to the top, plucking three coconuts and climbing down carrying them without dropping them. It was a bruise to the male ego of many men who participated, because they were beaten by Eli, and this happened on many occasions. The local toddy shop displayed a worn out picture of Eli from the Amballore Times, proudly receiving the winner’s trophy from the town’s mayor amid a group of macho men who looked deeply disappointed.

  Customers in toddy shops in and around Amballore speak of her even today with fearful admiration. She was a regular customer in a male-dominated local toddy shop, and she used to have a privileged backdoor entry to said shop. She used to beat all the male customers (she was the only female customer there) in arm-wrestling competitions sponsored by the toddy shop. A free bottle of toddy with fried prawns was the winner’s prize.

  ***

  The children of Vareed and Eli, including Thoma and Inasu, and their sisters were saddled with double sorrow in one day when they found out that both of them were gone. They did not leave a message about where they had gone. No messenger approached the family mediating for ransom for a possible kidnapper, in exchange for the release of the septuagenarians. The news saddened their friends and relations. The entire town was intrigued.

  Ads were placed in local newspapers under the heading “Couple Missing,” with their photos prominently attached. The ad urgently beseeched readers to be on the lookout for the couple and to contact Thoma in case they ran into them.

  Thoma, even though he was no more staying with his parents at that time — he had been excommunicated by his siblings and was then residing at a rental home in Mannuthy — came to his ancestral home, and together with his siblings, filled out a “missing person report” and submitted it to the local police. This was met with sarcasm from the law enforcement agency, since it was reported that a drunken policeman, who was in charge of the station at that time, scribbled at the bottom of the report, “who wants a snake charmer back? Not me!” This sarcastic comment referred to Vareed and his mystical power, implying that Amballore was better off without him. It was obvious that the police were not going to do anything about the tragedy. However, unofficial investigation went on for a long time by Good Samaritans of Amballore.

  The grief-stricken Thoma and his siblings waited for that happy day when the couple would show up at their doorstep.

  Amballore residents had no alternative but to believe that the couple died on that fateful day under mysterious circumstances. Some thought they were abducted by extraterrestrials, because that was what everyone in Amballore used to believe when someone disappeared mysteriously.

  Some citizens believed that Vareed, he of undying psychic powers, could will himself and his wife from their untimely deaths and show up in Amballore at any moment. This remained a figment of their imaginations or a pipedream, since no one either saw the couple or heard from them ever since their disappearance; not in their original forms, anyway.

  The toddy shop’s customers lived in massive fear of Eli walking into their midst, even after she disappeared. They were worried that Vareed, even though dead himself, might resurrect her through his supernatural powers, which were believed to have been intact even after his demise.

  2KERALA’S ORIGIN PER AMBALLORE UNIVERSITY

  Homo sapiens sprang into existence some 250,000 years ago, riding an evolutionary cycle that resumed after being interrupted when an asteroid hit the earth sixty-seven million years ago and exterminated dinosaurs. It was fifty thousand years ago when Homo sapiens made their grand entrance to Central Asia. The land called Kerala and its inhabitants, Malayalees, appeared in the evolutionary hierarchy after this landmark; that is, less than fifty thousand years ago.

  Malayalees descended from a breed of Homo sapiens called Homo malayalees, and this happened toward the latter part of the evolution—in fact in the very final phase, qualifying them to become the most developed humans at birth. This intriguing discovery took its origin not only from Amballore University’s Evolutionary Science Department but also from a reservoir of Indian mythology that links Mahavishnu’s incarnation intricately to the Malayalees’ birth.

  The general public may be unaware of this, but Amballore University’s anthropology faculty was staffed by a bevy of famous misfits. The department was chaired by an intellectual who erred on the critical theory of the keralasaur, a native of very ancient Kerala and a far-removed maternal uncle of the dinosaur. Contrary to the widely held theory that the keralasaur is the ancestor of the dinosaur, the chair propounded a theory in which the animal was postulated to be contemporary of the dinosaur. The demotion of the keralasaur from its esteemed ancestral status was not looked upon favorably. This critical error made him qualified to chair the famous department. His task as a chair was to rewrite his controversial theory.

  Yet another faculty member proposed that when dinosaurs were obliterated, keralasaurs who lived in ancient Kerala survived the cataclysmic collision with the asteroid. This faction lived in isolation, and refused to set foot outside Kerala. When Homo malayalees arrived in Kerala, they were baffled to see that a piece of ancient history was surviving intact on its soil! The ensuing battle when Homo malayalees threw barrages of the coconuts at the native enemy stamped out the keralasaur once and for all. If the outcome of the battle were the other way around, Homo malayalees would have been history today and it would have been inhabited by keralasaurs.

  This controversial and widely refuted theory made him eligible to get a faculty position at Amballore University.

  As a matter of fact, each and every faculty member of the anthropology faculty was on a long-term appointment to complete the task of rewriting his or her doctoral thesis.

  ***

  Amballore’s anthropologists delved deep into Kerala’s history and civilization. Though controversial, their theories on the keralasaur and Homo malayalees captured widespread attention. As if these controversies were not enough to catapult the famous temple of knowledge into stardom, another professor came up with an eye-popping theory on the Kerala civilization, which awarded the malayalees the incarnation status of Mahavishnu. This unbelie
vable theory involves, of all things one could think of, Charles Darwin, the father of the theory of evolution!

  This renowned professor’s theory became controversial and was widely challenged by authorities in Indian mythology and adherents of the incarnation theory. Profound thinkers of evolutionary science were not amused either. The theory soon ceased being a valid scientific hypothesis and rapidly deteriorated to folklore in Amballore. In spite of this decline, the heyday of the theory was still commemorated fondly by a set of ardent followers, and hence it merits knowing what the professor came up with.

  When Charles Darwin, the father of the theory of evolution, died, the resident God in heaven refused to let him in. God, in his infinite wisdom, had originally planned that Darwin become a creationist, but he disappointed the Creator by becoming an evolutionist. This infuriated God. He transformed Darwin to a frog as soon as he arrived at the gates of heaven after his eventful life on earth. He was asked to return to earth to do penance for his sins by becoming a creationist and repudiating the theory of evolution. He was also challenged to make a giant leap into mankind from his measly froggy existence.

  Just so that the famous evolutionist was not overly disgraced and degraded to the depths of the oceans, God named him a frog prince as a consolation prize. He was given a promise that he would change into a prince if he ever was to be kissed by a beautiful princess. With that promise, he was sent to Amballore University to take up a faculty position there.

  The frog-prince Charles reluctantly croaked and arrived at the university’s anthropology department. The chair-frog of the department croaked from the other side of the pond and promised to give him all the resources that he could muster to make his stay as pleasant as possible.

  Charles’s task was to convert himself to a creationist. The famous scientist succeeded partially in that task; he became a creationist-evolutionist! He could not become a total creationist; old habits die hard. He added a flavor of evolutionism to creationism and propounded a theory—still kept in the Museum of Anthropology at Amballore University—that involved the origin of the Kerala civilization.