Amballore House (17 page)

“I see you moving towards the sun in the west, drowned in its reddish-orange glow. You would have already gone south prior to this westward trek,” the old lady continued, this time packing her mouth with fresh tobacco and pointing her walking stick westward.

“She talks in riddles!” Kareena would later tell the nuns she was staying with. She was now a resident of the Mother Teresa’s ashram and part of many of their social activities. The ashram accepted her as if she was one of the nuns, even though she only stayed there to make it easy to get involved in the activities; she still retained her Central Reserve Police job.

Kareena went inside her room, closing the front door, to fetch some money to give to the lady and get rid of her, before she resumed more of her insane predictions. While searching her drawer for some rupee notes, she heard the old lady talking to her loudly through the closed door: “But don’t worry, ma’am—I will be with you all the way to the end.”

When Kareena reappeared by opening the door, she had already gone. A reddish-brown tobacco spit was on the gray tile right outside the door, as a proof that the strange lady had been there. Her walking stick was abandoned on the ground. The lady herself was gone. This was odd. Kareena had been inside her room not more than one minute, not enough time for the limping gypsy to disappear.

While she was thinking these thoughts, Kareena started hearing the gypsy again. This time the old lady was invisible. She shouted from the sky, or wherever she was: “Oh, one more thing, ma’am. Even though you will be heading to one sunset, you will be seeing many sunsets at the same time.”

“Incredibly crazy woman,” Kareena told herself of the old gypsy. She was, however, perturbed by this bizarre incident for months. Did the gypsy mean that she would be dead when she mentioned that she would have already gone south? Did she mean that she would die while flying west to Europe? And why would the old hag be accompanying her during her trips? Many sunsets at the same time? She would have laughed at these predictions in normal circumstances. But instead, she was alarmed. Very alarmed.

***

It was six months after the gypsy’s visit that Kareena was diagnosed with breast cancer. Everyone was surprised on hearing this. Cancer of any kind did not run in the family, since it was not hereditary. Yet, it decided to pay a visit to Kareena, who was the embodiment of health and beauty and vibrancy. She discovered a lump in her breast while taking a shower. The pathology report revealed the shocker: malignant cancer of the breast, stage III. This meant that the cancer had spread into many lymph nodes nearby
and into the muscle underneath the breast.

The pathology exam was followed by extensive surgeries that included a mastectomy and the removal of a number of lymph nodes. Mastectomy was unavoidable because the advanced cancer had invaded nearby tissues. Surgery was followed by adjuvant systemic chemotherapy. Her hair changed color from cloud dark to reddish blond. Being fair skinned, she was easily mistaken as someone from Europe, probably an Italian. An Italian speaking Malayalam was a novelty.

It was while she was undergoing chemotherapy that the gypsy appeared again. The fortune teller had given up her walking stick in favor of a wheelchair. Kareena was reading something at that moment, sitting in her chemo chair. She was surprised that the elderly lady managed to get into the cancer hospital.

The persistent tobacco-chewing habit had made gypsy’s lips reddish. The octogenarian wheeled herself into the wash basin and spit into it, cleared her throat, and wiped her lips with back of her hand. She came to the chemo chair.

“Remember, your journey will be long. And tiring. But don’t you worry, dear; you will see a bright star at the end. You and I are going together to that star. There will be no more darkness. Hang in there, darling; be bold,” she told Kareena.

“You and I are going to a bright star? Are you going with me on my trip?” asked Kareena.

The gypsy said, “Yes, dear. We both are going.”

“Who are you?” Kareena asked. “Are you really a gypsy? I know you are stalking me. Please tell me—”

Before she completed what she was saying, the gypsy was gone. She disappeared right in front of Kareena’s eyes. The wheelchair was left behind.

The chemo regimen was grueling and took months to finish. It took its toll on her. Long periods of lonely existence inside the chemo room gave her time to ruminate over the past. Sometimes, her entire life did a flashback, unraveling right in front of her very own eyes
like a screenplay. Often, she would make assessments of her life, seeing it unfolding in her mind’s eye. She was reminded of some nostalgic yet tragic Malayalam movies she watched long ago.

After a few months of treatment, the disease went into remission. There was unimaginable relief. She had previously harbored skepticism and subscribed to pessimism when the grim disease had knocked at her door, toppled her hopes, and thrown her life off balance. Her life had hung in the balance; her life had appeared knotted in uncertainty. Those disillusionments were gone upon remission and replaced by a renewed optimism on life.

She quit her job in 1997 and took an early retirement. She took a train back to Kerala. Her nun friends accompanied her to the station to see her off. She was reminded of her first train journey to Rajasthan years ago, when she was full of life and fire. On the return trip to Kerala, she felt that her life was drained from her. “That is what life does to one’s life; it drains life out of one,” thought Kareena bitterly as she was heading to Kerala.

She wished that her fairy friend would visit her and give her some words of consolation. She wished that the mysterious woman would reappear and agree that she had been wrong all along when she said that Kareena’s journey would be long and arduous.

She settled down in Amballore, far from the desert sands of Rajasthan. She was happy, although with reservation, since the gypsy’s words were hovering over her like a perennial shadow.

***

The cancer came back with a vengeance five years after the first diagnosis, in 2001, while she was settling down to a disease-free life. Short are the happy chapters of life, like lightning bolts that illuminate the world with brilliance but disappear even before one takes note of them. Kareena took note that life consisted of short surges of happiness littered over long periods of desolation. Her life itself exemplified this thesis: her unhappy childhood was followed by a happy career followed by the heartbreaking news of breast cancer followed by remission followed by the devastating relapse.

Even though she had undergone annual checkups and she had
received consistently clean reports on her progress, it was puzzling that she was declared positive once more in the year 2001. She even had taken precautions such as undergoing oophorectomy to enhance disease-free survival (DFS). She had undergone mastectomy of the other breast and a hysterectomy and would have welcomed any other “ectomies” to enhance DFS. The oncologist in Amballore, who took charge after she returned to Kerala, delivered the feared news while she was at her annual checkup: the disease had progressed to stage IV, which meant that it had spread to other parts of the body. It had metastasized to her liver and lung.

The gypsy had predicted a long road of a tough journey. She was speaking figuratively, so thought Kareena. She was probably not talking about a possible European trip but a journey of life. War was still raging; her battles were only half-fought. She had miles to go before it would be all over.

Kareena had hopes in life and an unabated optimism, as evidenced by her previous letters to Mannuthy. She was now beginning to think they were all misplaced dreams. She remembered some of the letters she had written to the family:

“Let me conclude this letter with a promise that I will keep on hoping, as I have always done. I will keep on hoping, because hope begets hope. I will keep on hoping, because it gives the surprising illusion of the disappearance of the darkness around me. I will keep on hoping, because I dare to dream.

“I will keep on hoping, if only to rekindle passions which are bound to fade away. I hope that I will live a full, happy life.

“Here is to hopes and dreams. From Kareena, with love.”

The gypsy had predicted a long road of tough journey. She was talking figuratively, so thought Kareena. She was not probably talking about a possible European trip, but a journey of life. War was still raging; her battles were only half-fought. She had miles to go before it would all be over.

The surging optimism that permeated her letters was proved misplaced. Her dreams and hopes kept on waning as disease progressed; darkness visited her, scaring her like a midnight knock
at the door would.

It was in 2006 that Kareena faced the final stage of the cancer, ten years after it lifted its ugly head. The oncologist revealed that the disease had spread to her brain. His recommendation for radiation treatment for the whole brain was rejected by Kareena, since she had lost confidence in any kind of treatment. She was taking some Ayurvedic herbs, if only to get some psychological relief, not necessarily as a remedy for the cancer.

Her poor plight declared to the world that she was defenseless like an unmanned ship out in a ravenous ocean that raged with waves whipped up by a tempest. She knew that it was an irony of fate that she was battling the disease all alone. She had given shelter and shade to her siblings, and her reward should have been different. None of them visited her.

She had been involved with many activities of Mother Teresa’s charity mission, such as nursing patients. However, she had never expected that she would become a patient, and that too, a cancer patient. She was befuddled by the irony of fate, which insisted that what you gave was not what you got in return. Both the family experience and social experience forced her to come to that conclusion.

***

Kareena’s parents, Thoma and Ann, who disappeared from this earth in 1988 and had not been seen ever since, dropped by to pay a visit. She had been admitted for palliative care at Amballore Hospital during the concluding phase of the disease. Rita, their eldest daughter and Kareena’s elder sister, came for a visit as well. She had departed heavenward before Kareena did.

Kareena had been having frequent bouts of delirium lately, zigzagging in and out of consciousness like a spinning earth cycling through day and night. Her awareness of her surroundings ebbed and flowed. During short bursts of time when she was in command of her faculties, she questioned whether she was in fact seeing the ghosts or just hallucinating. She was not totally convinced that they were figments of her imagination.

The visiting threesome suddenly appeared in front of Kareena like the Holy Trinity, Ann and Rita positioning closely behind Thoma. Ann was clad in her chatta and mundu, and Rita was attired in a white sari. Mother was wearing her classic earrings the size of a newborn baby’s head. Those collectors’ items almost touched her shoulders.

In spite of the best of their intentions to console her before her soul would get out of her badly cancer-ravaged body, they unknowingly injected terror in her just by their mere arrival. It was unsettling for Kareena seeing the threesome suddenly in her room, having come not possibly to have a cup of coffee and to have a good time ruminating over the good old days. She knew in her bones that the unusual visit had an undercurrent of supernatural proportions. She had an odd feeling about their arrival, and that feeling was far from soothing.

Her nagging suspicion that her days were numbered got a reinforced certitude all of a sudden. She knew it was time to go, that the music was over. The realization that she was going to be dead in minutes came like a bolt of thunder and flash of lightning that she was too familiar with during the savage monsoon rains in Kerala.

“Kareena, we are here because we just want to be near you in your hour of need,” Thoma announced, hoping to instill courage in his second daughter. He was struggling to quell the anguish that rose in his heart like a viper’s fang when he saw his daughter’s poor state of health. The final curtain call of cancer had left Kareena a grotesque figure, with massive swelling overtaking her arms and body. She was hardly recognizable to her visitors. It went without saying that the visitors were crushed to see Kareena under the grip of advanced cancer, suffering inconsolably.

In spite of the looming tragedy about to befall, Thoma was afraid of getting close to Kareena because of her notoriously unexpected outbursts of temper and because of her reputation for firing away fiery letters to home. He kept a safe distance while addressing her.

Ann and Rita started showering Niagara Falls of tears. Through the unstoppable tears and in spite of them, they told her not to worry
and to be bold and happy, because it would be a far, far better place where she was going than what she had ever known.

She held on to the hospital pillows tightly and clung to the bed rails fiercely, not letting go. She would grab even the last straw if only to keep clinging to life. Her will was failing her. Her determined mind that rejected the option of radiation treatment to prolong her life was now having second thoughts. She now wished she listened to the oncologist’s advice.

“I do not want to go,” she softly moaned to her pillows and bed. She then looked at her visitors hopefully, as if they could alter the situation. “I do not want to go.” She repeated her plea to the visitors. She then looked around the room helplessly, hoping against hope.

Ann, she of the jingling, humongous brass earrings, told her daughter, “Going away from this world is a far, far better thing that you would do than what you have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that you would go to than what you have ever known.” Mother was rolling the beads of her ever-present rosary, praying continuously, weeping, and consoling her daughter all at the same time.

In spite of the gravity of the moment and in spite of the few minutes left in her life, Kareena could not suppress her amazement at Ann being able to quote from Charles Dickens’s immortal novel
A Tale of Two Cities
. Ann, who only had a fourth grade education, was quoting from world-class literature! This realization jolted Kareena out of her delirium. For lack of a plausible explanation, she surmised that Ann had gotten her education in heaven and had graduated from the University of Heaven. She was invigorated to hear this uplifting quote from her mother, university degree or not. It prepared her to face the abyss of impending death, just as it prepared Sydney Carton to face the guillotine during the French Revolution.