Amballore House (10 page)

Where the bee sucks. there suck I.

In a cowslip's bell I lie;

There I couch when owls do cry.

On the bat's back I do fly

After summer merrily.

Merrily, merrily shall I live now

Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

Culture shock or not, I had whole-heartedly decided to leave for Canada to enter a new life. As it turned out, the passage that I took would turn into a cultural crossover, because I never came back to India thereafter to settle down. It turned out to be an expedition from the eastern cultural landscape to a western culture. Destiny took me through a path whereby I would settle down in Canada, returning to Kerala only for visits.

Air Canada, the magical carpet, disembarked me at Toronto airport. The genie appeared to me at the airport as soon as I rubbed on the Aladdin’s lamp.

“Anything you wish, my friend,” Genie told me.

I asked him to lead me to success, happiness, and the highest levels of academic achievement.

“Granted,” Genie said.

“I am pleased to grant you courage also. You will need that to face the challenges of a new life in an unfamiliar culture,” So saying, he disappeared, before I could even thank him.

It was during the fall season that I arrived in Canada. The season presented spectacular views of a harvest of colors, leaves turning gold, yellow, reddish, and purplish. This was an unusual sight for
me coming from a tropical climate with persistent greenery throughout the year. The fall season signaled that a number of festivities would come up in quick successions until the New Year. I was going to be part of the festivities such as Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas, which I only had heard of before, except Christmas which I had celebrated before in its Kerala version. There was much to look forward to.

The university had arranged for me to get a room in the dormitory. I was assigned the graduate students’ dormitory overlooking a soccer field and a lake that froze in the winter. When old man winter would come and freeze the lake, we students would walk over it, some of us claiming to be Jesuses who walked over the water. My friends from India and I wished that we could do more miracles such as converting water to wine. Instead, we had settle down to the continuous miracle of water turning into ice in the bitter cold weather of Canada.

Weather pattern suddenly took a turn for the worse. As November arrived, we were in the bone-chilling cold days, and started seeing sky-full of snowflakes. Sometimes, we got snowstorms. I, along with my friends from India struggled to get used to the new realities. I remember we made mass exodus to Woolworth department store to purchase winter clothing. Some of us looked like Eskimos when we wore thick winter parkas.

I joined the India students’ association and forged valuable friendship with my countrymen. Our friendship created a home away from home. We used to go visit Indian families in town. We were like an extended family. The closeness was practically a result of the huge distance that separated us from India.

Heavy snow in the winter transformed the landscape to Canada’s winter wonderland. One day we were taking a stroll over a field of snow driven by a snowstorm, when my friend Babu suddenly disappeared, because five feet of snow in an invisible ditch swallowed him. We pulled him out to safety, promising ourselves that we would never venture out in the snow alone.

Dormitory parties on Fridays and Saturdays were something new to
us Indian students. Some of us had barely talked to a girl while in India. Dancing with a girl during university parties was a totally novel idea, something unheard of back in India. My friends and I huddled together during the parties and gave each other moral support in a strange gathering of boys and girls having untold fun. We earned the nickname “odd bunch” from our Canadian friends, thanks to our predictable gathering at the corner of the dancing hall, holding beer bottles, and staring at the girls, as if we were in a staring contest. Other than staring, we did pretty much nothing, not daring to ask a girl to dance, and pipe dreaming that they would approach us for dance. My friend Babu was afraid that the girls would beat him up if he asked them for a dance, since, according to him, the girls were much bigger than him, and they would be insulted to be asked for a dance by a dwarf.

We, the miserable bunch, would keep on standing there like fixtures, consuming untold bottles of Canadian beer, and peeing a lot. We admired the vitality of the Canadian girls and their courage to dance with boys, a far cry from the Indian girls we used to know back home. We were surprised that some of the boys had more than one girlfriend, which was possible in India only to gods. Indian god Krishna was reputed to have had ten thousand and eight girlfriends. We started calling our Canadian friends with more than one girlfriend as lord Krishnas.

The band would play the most popular pieces of the sixties and the seventies, such as those from Beatles, Bee Gees, and Abba. The music alone would take us far away from India, a land where we grew up listening to Carnatic music, Hindustani music and the Bollywood movie songs.

We were all gathered as usual in the corner one Friday evening when the party was in full swing, the band playing “Lucy in the Sky with diamonds,” the drug-induced song from the Beatles, and the crowd dancing to the tunes as if they were stoned. As a matter of fact, we would learn that drug was readily available in the campus. A number of boys and girls gathered on the dancing floor were not on earth, but in the sky with Lucy who was adorned in diamonds.

It was while the said Beatles song was blaring that we noticed that
Babu was missing from our group. We searched around for him, being afraid that he might have fallen into a snow pit and disappeared from the face of the earth.

Suddenly, Babu appeared. He looked like he was dazed. We shouted for him, beckoning him to our midst, happy that he was safe after all. He decided to ignore us for some reason. He walked straight to the dance floor, as if he was possessed. He approached the tallest girl in the group, who was dancing with her even taller boyfriend. She was six foot two inches tall and he, easily, a six and half footer.

While we were anxiously watching what he was up to, Babu told the girl: “I dare you to beat me up; I am asking you for a dance.” The girl was shocked to hear this challenge from a dwarf and she stopped dancing, looking puzzled. Then she looked at her boyfriend and he looked at her and together they burst into spontaneous laughter.

The girl’s name was, unbelievably, Lucy. Her boyfriend was Steve. He crouched down on the floor and lifted Babu off the floor, stood up, and handed him over to Lucy, as if Babu was a packaged present that Steve was giving Lucy as a gift—a boyfriend to girlfriend gift on a Friday night. This done, he left the floor to be seated nearby and to watch the unfolding drama.

Lucy resumed dancing to the tunes of “Lucy in the Sky,” bear-hugging Babu. He dangled down holding on to her pendulous breasts, unable to wrap his arms around her wide shoulders; at least that was how it appeared to us, the spectators. There were wild cheers from the merry crowd who stopped dancing and stepped out, giving the floor to the sole use of the romantic pair. The band switched gears and started playing Elvis Presley’s “Can’t help falling in love with you.” The crowd cheered on. That was Babu’s very first dance ever since he was born, and that was the very first time he would lay his hands on a pair of Canadian breasts.

We, his friends, could not believe the unimaginable sight. Some of us were shocked, but most of us were jealous, very jealous.

As Saturday morning rolled in, we all met in the dining hall for our
breakfast, including Babu. He revealed that he took drugs Friday evening prior to coming to the dance. His roommate had arranged drug supply for him. He snorted so much that his small structure could not handle it and he was stoned. On the top of it, he filled himself with beer and was too drunk to know what he was doing. He did not remember that we had beckoned him to our midst while he walked into the party previous night.

Lucy was tall enough to be called Lucy in the Sky. It became a common sight during subsequent dance parties that she would carry Babu and dance. She then started carrying him to the dormitory dining hall and around the campus! She left her boyfriend and started dating Babu. They would be married within one year of that memorable dance episode.

The course work and the research were the integral part of the graduate school and this took up most of my time. Weekend parties would soon be followed by a serious workweek. I remember many days of serious study listening to the Carpenters “Rainy Days and Mondays” that my roommate blasted out of his stereo. He was one of the lord Krishnas. His girlfriends used to visit him often, interrupting my studies. I thought how unfair it was—here, he was crawling with girlfriends while I had to make do with no girlfriends at all. Life was unfair.

The grand ceremony of Christmas would come toward the year end, as a fitting conclusion. The festive atmosphere amid serious study for the semester finals was an unusual mixture. The song “Silent Night” heard in the perfect stillness of the Canadian snow was, and still is, an unforgettable experience. The sound waves got trapped in the snow, and so the Canadian nights were perfectly still, and therefore it appeared appropriate that some of us commented that “Silent Night” should be the Canadian national song. Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” was another appropriate song for Canada, because we always had white Christmases. The song reminded me and my friends that we were in an ideal land to have days merry and bright and to have all our Christmases white, just like Bing Crosby sang.

Christmas would lead to the New Year and its celebration. Come
April, spring would arrive and thereafter summer. The spectacular greenery of the lawns and the trees was a totally different sight from now-familiar snow-clad Canada.

We were all invited to Babu’s wedding in the summer. All of us were relieved that Lucy did not carry him to the altar where they were married by an Anglican minister. The church allowed a band to play “Lucy in the Sky with diamonds” just after the wedding vows were exchanged. That was a special song for both of them, bathed in sentimentality.

Babu gave her a diamond ring.

I, along with my friends from India, treasured the friendship which we made with our Canadian friends. We were amazed at the uninhibited and unconditional friendship that many of them offered to us. They considered each of us as one among them, even though we were poles apart from them in tradition, culture and outlook on life.

I would say that it was those invaluable friendships that eased by blending with the western culture. I especially treasure the memories of my life in the Canadian university dormitory during the initial years of my stay in Canada.

Even though many Canadian winters with evergreen trees covered with snow have gone by since I came to Canada, even though many rainbow colored leaves have fallen in many Canadian falls since I came here, even though many Canadian summers with their emerald green meadows have passed by me since I arrived here, I still maintain contact with my friends whom I met during my initial years, and would always gratefully remember how they extended bouquets of friendship, easing my transition into an unfamiliar culture.

***

I returned to Kerala in 1981 for a visit.

When I boarded the plane from Toronto en route to Kerala, I was full of anticipation and was looking forward to seeing Kerala after six years of absence. Kerala’s coconut palm trees would once more
be fluttering for me, the tall areca nut trees would once more be beckoning me to their elegant presence, and the restless rivers would once more be flowing for me. I was excited.

I left the Toronto airport, which hosted a sea of huge Air Canada jets that resembled resurrected red dinosaurs. At London, I was met with an ocean of British Airways’ carriers. One of them carried me to Mumbai. The flight from Mumbai to Chennai was by Indian Airlines. A train carried me from Chennai to Amballore. Finally I was at my new home in Amballore.

When I reached Kerala, I was greeted by all in the family. It was one of only a few occasions when all ten in the family were assembled under the same roof. Some of them had gotten married since my departure. Rita and her husband, Tim, were there to greet me. Kareena came from Rajasthan, and it was a pleasure to see her.

While enjoying mouthwatering Kerala cuisine, I was reminded of the bland Canadian food such as hamburgers, French fries, and soft drinks that they served in the university dorm cafeteria. While eating at my home in Amballore, I could not help thinking that back in my university, there would be long line of students holding food trays, heading toward the counter to order the kind of food he or she liked and filing out to sit in the sprawling dining room, after they were served. It felt strange sitting in a small dining room in Kerala. I felt out of place. However, the meal was appetizing enough to put those uncomfortable feelings behind.

One of the main highlights of the trip was visiting a prospective bride who happened to be Kareena’s friend. Kareena had arranged for me to meet the girl to see if we matched. This was an age-old tradition in Kerala—paying a visit to a prospective bride to gauge if she and the prospective groom matched and to see if their astrological signs and stars were on an amiable and non-collisional course. This custom—called pennukanal
or “seeing the girl”—
was integral part of the time-honored custom of arranged marriage still followed in India, though not as vigorously as it used to be.

I must say, that I was forced by Kareena to meet the girl, since I had my own reasons not to be drawn into a marriage proposal. I had a
girlfriend in Canada. That was the first time that I revealed the news to my family. All my siblings were surprised to hear of this news. In my mind, that was reason enough not to initiate any wedding plans. However, my family, especially Kareena, would not hear of this and they insisted on proceeding with pennukanal.

“
We want you to marry an Indian girl, preferably a Malayalee girl,” Kareena insisted, talking on behalf of everyone in the family.