The bus functioned more like a flying automobile executing an up-and-down bobbing motion. Floating like cotton wool, the vehicle appeared to execute the Brownian motion of physics when caught up in crosscurrents of multidirectional winds. The Amballore citizens noticed that the flying object touched the ground occasionally. While on the ground, the bus could weave in and out of the ever-present traps in the road that led to nowhere. It was a flying bus, yet it could easily blend in with the crowd of typical beaten-down buses trudging unceremoniously along Kerala’s roads.
It could change its shape like a chameleon would change its color. This enabled it to negotiate the turns of an unfriendly road. The material of the bus frame was inferred to be highly elastic in order for it to automatically narrow down to squeeze through the unexpectedly constricted portions of the road. The bus, on these occasions, resembled a very long centipede, having been stretched out of shape.
With flower prints all over its surface and ominous-looking graffiti to boot, the bus looked like the work of an artist from hell. The vehicle was usually followed by a dedicated crowd, intrigued by it and determined to unravel the mystery surrounding it. They traveled mostly as pedestrians, some in rickshaws and yet others on bikes. The mysterious vehicle traveled very slowly along Hell’s Highway as if it were on a sightseeing trip. The dedicated followers took pains to follow the slowly moving phenomenon. No one could see the inside because of the stained glass windows.
The vehicle and its retinue of truth-seeking stalwarts parading Hell’s Highway in the middle of the night was nothing but spellbinding. The nighttime crowd flooding the streets could just as well have come from the local church festival that attracted an immense population, which usually spilled into people’s front yards. A band played satanic music. Street vendors sold candies and coconut drinks. Toddy was plentiful. They kept a respectful distance from the bus, being afraid of the unknown forces inside of it and possibly outside of it that controlled its course. No one knew who drove the bus, if at all there was a driver. They speculated that it could just as well be a self-driven bus.
This group included Einstein look-alikes who claimed to know the general theory of relativity that bestowed its supernatural aura upon the enigmatic Amballore House.
The bus always attracted a carnival-like crowd. The variety store appended to Amballore’s petrol station started selling trinkets, including Einstein masks, to entice die-hard Einstein followers to buy and wear them in order to become instant Einsteins. The would-be Einsteins prided themselves in understanding the theory of relativity, the most flamboyant theory of the twentieth century, designed to unlock the secrets of nature. The store was kept open from midnight onward to cater to the crowd that gravitated toward Amballore to partake in the festivities linked to the arrival of the Midnight Express.
The reporters from the Amballore Times started hovering around Amballore on midnights. The gathering of the press was more marked at midnight, when it was a given that the bizarre-looking bus would suddenly appear at Amballore Junction from nowhere to kick off its mysterious expedition to Amballore House. Joining the press were investigators into the paranormal phenomena, curious scientists from Amballore University, and weird onlookers who liked to hang around Sam-Som’s Entertainment Center and the abandoned temple, both located by the side of Hell’s Highway.
To their surprise, the reporters found that the bus did not stop at the gate of the mansion to wait for it to open to let it in. Instead, it lifted in the air, floated over the perimeter wall, and dived into the compound like a drone. It then disappeared just like that.
On some other occasions, the bus was found to pass through the perimeter wall without inflicting any damage to it. The wall stayed put, leading scientists to speculate about a newfound physics of a solid’s osmosis through a solid, unlike the well-known physics of liquid to liquid osmosis through a semipermeable membrane.
On one rare night, the bus stopped at the gate and unloaded passengers. This time, the press was able to get a closer look. They reported that the passengers were corpses that could walk. The press found out to their dismay that any pictures they took of the passengers turned out to be blank. Therefore, the public had to take a giant leap of faith to believe what they heard from the reporters.
Some of the passengers had arisen from the graveyard at Saint Joseph’s Church upon being summoned by Vareed. The public did not have the foggiest idea why only a handpicked group emerged from the grave. They did not know the significance of the occasional arrival of the Midnight Express at Amballore Junction. Mystery abounded.
***
Burial ceremonies in the paddy field were rudimentary and hurried. Instead of the conventional six-foot pit where a corpse was supposed to be buried, the aforementioned dead bodies were buried just under one foot, which spoke volumes of total disregard for the dead. These were the ones who died without anyone mourning. These were the ones called the poor and destitute. These were the ones for whom no tears were shed, for whom no bells tolled.
When the monsoon rains came and flooded parts of Kerala, Amballore’s abandoned paddy field overflowed with water that washed away the top layers of the soil, thus exposing the corpses buried just under. The exposed hair fluttered in the wind, scaring the daylights out of newcomers to the area. Little children and grown men got so horrified by the scene that they ran for their lives and ended up right in the outstretched arms of the nymphs of the demigod’s temple, who promptly led them to the pond to meet their watery ends.
Then there is the story of a certain man named Poulose who was buried in the paddy field by his wife, Mariamma. She buried him standing up to settle a score in the game of life that these two had played. Though not a long story, it is spellbinding enough not to regret knowing about it.
Poulose was a hard-core alcoholic. He never met a toddy glass he did not drink, as his drinking buddies were quick to attest. They also pointed out that he was the first incarnation of Mahavishnu— that is, a fish—because he drank like a fish—toddy, that is. It was by mistake that he evolved into a human being, one of those aberrations of creation. He mostly spent his waking hours in the Amballore pub. He liked the pub life so much so that he could not live without it, so much so that he continued to go back to the pub daily even after taking up a job and therefore could not keep the job and got promptly fired; so much so that he was hated by his wife, Mariamma, for not supporting her, making her unable to make both ends meet; so much so that his home doors were shut against him at night when he dragged himself there from the pub. He spent his life sitting (and drinking, of course) and lying down to sleep in between the drinking sessions. He never had to stand up during his whole damned drunken life.
One day he suddenly died, giving enormous relief to Mariamma for not having to put up with the burden that God had sent her way. Though sad in some ways, she was relieved and freed.
“You spent your lifetime sitting and lying down, you stupid son of a bitch,” Mariamma told his dead body, with a final kiss, controlling her tears at the same time.
Then she buried him standing up, with a toddy glass in his hand.
“This is your only chance to stand up since you were born; stand up for what you believe; stand up for toddy,” Mariamma told him as she tossed the final handful of mud into the grave.
She thought of getting those memorable words into a written epitaph as a lasting memorial to the alcoholic, but thought better of it and shelved the plan.
Poulose died without any epitaph, without sad hymns, without eulogy, and without anybody weeping. His drinking buddies were there to bid a final good-bye to send him off along a short road to hell. “Even hell is heaven if I have a glass of toddy,” Poulose used to tell his drinking buddies.
Mariamma buried Poulose only from the waist down. The first heavy rain of the monsoon gave a much-needed bath to Poulose and filled his glass with water, giving the impression that Poulose was holding full glass of toddy. His hair was waving in the monstrous monsoon wind, an
d he appeared ready to toast any passersby. His drinking buddies from the neighboring pub happened to walk by and were astonished to see their friend in his old form, ready for another drink.
“A friend is not a friend unless he can get drunk with you,” Poulose used to tell his drinking buddies.
A huge circle of his drinking buddies soon started gathering around him nightly, and they toasted to his health, whatever that meant, with the toddy glasses they carried, by clinking them to the one he was holding. “Blessed are those who get drunk even after their deaths and glory be to them in the toddy shops across Kerala,” his buddies intoned reverentially as the Midnight Express passed by them. They built an invisible shrine around him to worship him and worship his idea of ceaseless drinking.
It usually does not happen, but it happened one particular night: the Midnight Express stopped by the paddy field where Poulose was buried!
He was being toasted by his drinking buddies at that time. Eli got out of the bus while Vareed decided to stay inside, seeing everything outside but unseen by the outside world.
Once outside the bus, Eli made herself invisible.
It was a spectacularly windy night. The untamed wind picked up momentum and was shaking the banyan trees wildly. Eli had gotten out of the bus cautiously. As soon as she got out, the wind gathered witheringly fierce force and howled like a hundred jackals. The animal kingdom could see Eli even though she was invisible to the human eye. The sacrificial animals in the nearby temple trembled in fear as they saw Eli heading to the paddy field. The goats bleated uncontrollably, and the roosters went on a rampage of “cock, cock-a-doodle-doo,” as if morning had broken out. Coyotes in the distance yelped savagely, helplessly. The dogs in the street barked and ran away, tails tucked between legs; the cats meowed angrily. The owls on the banyan tree hooted with their heads turning in myriad directions like they could not make up their minds on where to look. A flock of crows cawed loudly and assembled on the plantain trees. All these bizarre animal acts occurred simultaneously as soon Eli got out of the Midnight Express. Eli was well known to the animals in the area; she was the terror of the pauper’s graveyard; she was the terror of Amballore.
There was thunder and lightning from the growling skies. White clouds resembling huge umbrellas gathered under the midnight sky over paddy field to protect the inmates of the pauper’s graveyard from Eli. The nightingale, the bird of the night, perched on the tall coconut palm tree, stopped singing. Mother Nature waited in anguished anticipation. It was a befitting welcome to Eli.
Unseen to the drunks assembled around Poulose and unseen to the humanity following the Midnight Express, Eli approached the site where Poulose was buried. Poulose was in his usual form, extending his right arm and holding a rainwater-filled toddy glass that Mariamma had lovingly entrusted with him. His hair was scuffled erratically by the restless wind. He looked like a ghost.
Eli, she of superhuman strength, pulled Poulose out from the grave with little effort. To the spectators, it was as if Poulose came straight out of the grave all by himself. He was standing erect facing his admirers, with mud covering his lower torso. Eli, fighting the rigor mortis, extended both of his arms sideways. With both arms thus extended, Poulose resembled either a large bird ready to take off to the skies or Jesus Christ about to resurrect to heaven. Even though drunk as a skunk, as the expression goes, the gathered alcoholics were conscious enough to see this unexpected transformation of Poulose, who was moving of his own, despite branded legally dead.
Jesus Christ. At least, that is how Poulose appeared to the assembled friends around him. He appeared poised to launch himself upward toward heaven, resurrecting after a short burial period in the paddy field. They thought Poulose was the new messiah just resurrecting from the dead to preach salvation through binge drinking. Some of them knelt in front of him and started praying feverishly:
Our Poulose in heaven,
Your kingdom come,
On earth as in the toddy shops.
Give us today our daily drink;
Forgive us our sins
As we forgive those who give us no toddy.
To Vareed in the bus, who could see everything, Eli looked like a ventriloquist holding her puppet, Poulose. She was, in fact, getting ready to use her puppet act on Poulose.
Once upon a time, when she was alive, she used to work as a ventriloquist during church and temple festivals and amid the crowds attending Trichur Pooram. People used to marvel at her amazing ability to imitate anyone’s voice, whether it was a child, adult man, adult woman, animal—whoever and whatever. She was so talented that she made a living out of her ventriloquism.
Clever as she was in imitating any kind of voice, masculine or feminine, it was an easy task for her to speak in Poulose’s masculine and drunken voice. Eli did her best imitation of Poulose’s drunken voice.
To the sinners kneeling in front of Poulose, Eli spoke in Poulose’s voice: “I, Poulose, who art the resurrected messiah of the alcoholics in Kerala, solemnly bless you sinners kneeling in front of me, because the heavens belong to you. Distant is not the day when you will join me in heaven to celebrate and have a hearty drink of toddy. I hereby pronounce you as the lucky ones chosen to meet me in the toddy club in heaven. Salvation is yours.”
Poulose was moving his lips (not much of lips; the flesh had mostly disappeared, making him practically a skeleton) and clacking together his teeth, with help from the famous ventriloquist. As they listened to the unbelievable voice of Poulose addressing them personally, the devotees’ ardent prayers took on a higher note and became passionate and emotional. Poulose was talking to them just like Christ talked to the disciples who came to see him after his resurrection. They chanted in praise of Poulose.
Yet some others took to their heels in fear as they saw Poulose transformed and ready to resurrect, horror-struck as they were to witness a dead man moving, talking, and readying himself to fly to the skies. Eli, for good measure, pulled down the escapees’ mundus to enhance the drama. The mundus promptly departed the bodies, and they were all in shorts—except those who did not have shorts, who ran in their birthday suits. The eloping drunks were horrified by the spooky episode.
Then they saw an even more unbelievable sight: Poulose started chasing them! He was floating and coming for them, positioned right behind them. He shouted at them, “Ye of little faith who do not believe in me, let you rot in hell. Lucky are the ones who believe in me, the resurrected Poulose. Don’t be doubting Thomases.”
“This place is haunted,” they screamed loudly as they deserted the graveyard.
Some of them thought that it was the last race of their lives, an Olympic race away from their loved ones and into the arms of death. They all got drenched by the rain that decided to pour down when Poulose resurrected. They ran for their dear lives, some of them crying out for their mommies.
The ghastly scenes of the night concluded when Poulose walked into the Midnight Express. As he approached the vehicle, its doors opened as if it was expecting him. The doors closed behind him, and the bus continued its trek toward Amballore House.
***
The abduction of Poulose was one of the many that Vareed and Eli would engineer in their career as the aliens’ ambassadors. Even though they usually kidnapped exceptionally talented scientists, they occasionally stole corpses from pauper’s graveyard and abducted ordinary folks like Poulose. This was meant to provide specimens to the researchers at Amballore House.
This was not the first time that the elderly couple swiped the corpses from the paddy field. Nor would this be the last time. Their goal was to create a bank of human organs, to use them as models to make artificial organs through 3D printing technology.
Some abductees underwent selective transplantation of organs by having a natural organ swapped for an artificial one. They would then be kept under observation to judge the viability of the replaced organ.
Amballore House had already assembled enough scientists to run the program. V
areed told them, “We are working on a gateway to the future, a gateway leading to a life devoid of body breakdown and disease. We are working on newer and newer frontiers of the genetic engineering. And yes, we are working towards attaining immortality outside Amballore House. “
Some of the scientists were not so sure about this enthusiasm of Vareed to create a world of sheer happiness. They were concerned that the happy world would leave nothing to hope for in the afterlife.
Vareed would reply that the imminent problems of the world took precedence to the visions of an afterlife. He said, “We create our own heaven and hell right here in our own life, in our world. We create heaven by eradicating diseases. The elixir of immortality is within our reach. This is more important than worrying about an afterlife.
“Seeking happiness in the post-mortem world is misplaced hope, just a mirage. We are, on the other hand, seeking an oasis in this desert of life, an oasis that will sustain us in this life, an oasis that appears in the form of a disease-free world. This is it folks! What you see in this world is what we get; this world is a reward in itself.” Vareed pontificated to the researchers.
The artificial organs, per Vareed, would be intelligent; in other words, each organ would be equipped with its own microchip that controlled its functions. A number of artificial organs with their own subbrains were prelude to the human body that Vareed visualized, a body that would have distributed brainpower throughout it, instead of all the neural activity being concentrated in a single brain. The brain residing in the head would be like a central processing unit, coordinating the functions of all the mini brains in the body.
The main brain would function as a backup for the distributed mini brains.
8THE WORLD OF YESTERDAYS
Vareed often talked to the scientists that he occasionally assembled to update him on the ongoing research projects.
Amballore House Page 23