Amballore House (3 page)

She was having a face-to-face encounter with a sari-eating bullock in her birthday suit. Her sari was trapped in the animal’s gyrating mouth. She was presented naked to an audience consisting of the breakfast eater, the cart driver, the left-side bullock, Subashini, and Thoma who got ready to deliver a second course of spit. The audience also included schoolchildren walking to school, who closed their eyes to avoid seeing the unmentionable.

Sreedevi cut a helpless figure when the unexpected tide of events suddenly overwhelmed her. She was ashamed and trembling at the same time. She was screaming louder than the bellowing bullock. She wished she had not woken up that day, if only not to be drawn into the belittling theatrical developments that submerged her. The usually headstrong headmistress was reduced to a sorry figure of humiliation.

She threw her books hard at the bullock, hoping to restrain him from his sari diet. But the animal would have nothing of it, determined as he was to keep on munching. He braved a shower of hardbound botany textbooks thrown by the teacher. He took blow after blow valiantly and continued his breakfast, refusing to get interrupted. He ate students’ homework thrown by Sreedevi.

He and she were animals of the same hair, the bullock told himself, paraphrasing the expression “birds of the same feather,” while he was chomping on her sari, since he of the birthday suit found a kindred spirit in Sreedevi, who was attired in her birthday suit as well. The alert cart driver held on to the reins steadfastly to prevent his bullock from galloping to Sreedevi to have close encounter of a hanky-panky kind.

Thoma, who was watching the unfolding drama and looking for an appropriate opening to intervene, decided to spit at this moment. And spit he did vociferously at Sreedevi.

“Thoma spat,” chirped Subashini valiantly from her cage.

The parrot had been watching the developments from the serenity of her cage and decided to make the announcement of an important development of the unfolding drama, Thoma’s spitting, which was going to change the course of events and probably the future of mankind, judging from the grave tone of the parrot’s public announcement.

Thoma’s spit, with a determined mind of its own, split into two blobs at the end of its trajectory and decided to land on Sreedevi’s breasts. One blob landed on her left breast, and the other on her right breast. The spit never cared for screaming Sreedevi and launched itself onto where it always wanted to land, on her breasts. It had never thought that it would live to see a day when it could land on parts of female anatomy usually hidden from peering eyes by a ton of cotton sari.

The spit blobs were hanging on to her bobbing boobs and were contemplating a soft landing on her more private parts down under, when the alert cart driver, who was enjoying the show so far, decided that it was time to put a stop to the criminal plot of the
lecherous spit blobs. He jumped into action by jumping out of the cart to nip the scandalous act in the bud and to stop the infraction halfway in progress.

He retrieved the sari from the hungry animal and offered it real hay instead, which he retrieved from the cart. He restrained the animal to prevent it from making further advances toward the helpless teacher, to whom he tossed her half-eaten sari.

This charitable gesture from the bullock cart driver helped put a closure on the scandalous act that would have spiraled out of control. The news of the incident spread like wildfire in and around Mannuthy. The driver became a folk hero for saving the dignity of the headmistress.

***

Ann was not supposed to be born. This secret was known only to her children and her husband, in addition to her parents. Her very existence was a miracle that defied all the known laws of probability. Her origin makes a fascinating story because of it springing out from highly improbable circumstances.

Ann was known widely for her slowness, both in her mind and in her physical activity. “She is a slow-moving phenomenon,” Thoma told his siblings long ago, immediately after he tied the wedding
thali
around her neck at the altar of Saint Joseph’s Church. She would, however, pick up physical speed after her marriage, since she learned that it was an important factor for her survival. Speed helped her move out of the way of Thoma’s arm swings meant to beat the daylights out of her.

Ann was made as a hybrid of a statue and a human. People in Amballore believed that God originally planned to create a statue, but changed his mind in the middle. He retained the statue part, and supplemented it with live features. The result was Ann. Her overall makeover was the aftermath of God’s afterthought. He flip-flopped.

She had a cubical face—square shaped in the front, at both the sides, and at the bottom. Her geometry teacher used to say that she was created when God was taking geometry lessons. Curiosity got the better of God when he was in his geometry class, and he created
a geometry-shaped face. The simplest shape he could think of as manifesting perfection was a cube formed when squares decide to circumscribe three-dimensional space. Even though he realized that the face he created was the pits in regard to aesthetical quality, he decided not to alter it; he decided to stick to his guns, determined as he was to create geometrical replica of a human face. This was how Ann got her geometry-figure face.

She looked more like an aberration of three-dimensional space than someone who occupied it. When she talked or moved, it was like she set off distortions in the four-dimensional space-time continuum.

Ann’s mother and father were born eons ago, toward the latter part of the nineteenth century. Born to a farming community and brought up as Catholics in the strictest terms of the religion, they were exemplary citizens. Sex was taboo in those times, and they claimed that they did not know how they created six children— though they knew very well how they did it but were afraid of acknowledging their role in the process, except in the confessional stand at their local church. Every time they initiated the nine-month process of giving birth to a new child, they went to the confessional stand to confess to the priest of the grave sin they committed. Immediately after Ann was conceived, both Varghese Mappila (her father) and Eliamma (her mother) went to the church and confessed.

A sensationally unending stream of humongous blobs of semen spurted out of Varghese Mappila, whose ejaculation shook him and his bedroom like the Richter 9.5 earthquake that hit Chile in 1960. Eliamma screamed out so loudly that sleeping ducks in their farmyard woke up and went on a rampage of “quack, quack, quack” the whole night long, totally confused at the commotion that infiltrated their usually calm neighborhood.

Varghese Mappila had planned to rear the ducks up until Easter and then butcher them to make Easter duck curry. Annoyed at their incessant quacking, he announced to Eliamma that he was going to kill them the very next day.

“I will kill them tomorrow if only to get some sleep” he told
Eliamma, little knowing that the earthquake-like tremor that he had triggered was the underlying cause of the nocturnal agitation.

Eliamma was still in the throes of orgasm and hardly heard what her husband was saying, except the word “kill.”

“Kill me tomorrow as you wish, oh Vargy (she called him Vargy only in the bedroom); do anything you want to do to me, but don’t stop what you are doing right now,” moaned Eliamma, still in the powerful grips of ecstasy.

It was at that exhilarating moment of gripping intoxication that Eliamma felt that she was going to become pregnant, whether she was going to be killed by Varghese Mappila or not.

Unseen and unknown to her, a drama was getting enacted in Eliamma’s uterus. Her peacefully waiting egg was greeted by a huge number of sperms estimated to be 750 million. The task confronting this massively large number of sperms was not trivial. To mate with Eliamma’s egg was the mission of each and every one of these sperms. For each sperm, to join Eliamma’s egg, to fertilize it, and to form a human being was indeed a dream come true. The odds of this happening were like winning the Kerala State lottery: very poor, one in 750 million.

Each and every sperm knew about the unfavorable odds and naturally was very nervous. Competition was very high. The slowest-swimming sperm was found to be Ann’s. Every sperm in that big crowd knew in his or her heart that Ann was not going to make it.

They sang in unison:

Zero is the probability for the slowest Ann

To reach Eliamma’s egg, that is for sure.

You or I might get close to the egg, God willing,

But not Ann, not in this life, that’s for sure!

Let her and members of this mating club know,

This is a game of survival of the fittest!

Their song reached a crescendo. All of them were dancing a mating dance simultaneously, trying to outrun each other at the same time, with the ultimate goal of reaching Eliamma’s egg. These dwarfs, 750 million in number, far more than the Indian population at that time, far too small (micrometers in size) to be seen by the naked eye, transformed the uterus into an orchestra hall, filling it with their enchanting symphony.

Each sperm was wearing a tiny white T-shirt. Inscribed on the T-shirt was either X or Y. The X represented the X chromosome that particular sperm was carrying, which would result in a female baby upon successful fertilization. Y, on the other hand, represented a Y chromosome, which would result in a baby boy upon successfully merging with Eliamma’s waiting egg.

It is not that Ann was totally isolated in the swarm of Varghese Mappila’s sperms. The females in the group, carrying X chromosomes, were sympathetic to Ann and tried to cheer her up to speed her along in the process. “Come on, Ann! Move fast, you girl; you can do it, you can,” they shouted encouragingly to Ann, trying to pull her along with them. The opposing male team of Y chromosome carriers was contemptuous to Ann, and they ridiculed the X chromosome carriers for creating a scene and detouring from the principal task of accomplishing fertilization.

Far, far away from earth, in the land of heaven, God was watching this incredibly fascinating yet alarming development with amusement and meticulous attention. He lit up a cigarette; sipped on a cup of coffee, and turned off the TV he was watching. He then pulled the window curtain and looked outside and saw his neighbor forgot to empty the trash. While cursing him along with the greenhouse effect and ozone layer depletion, he started watching the terrestrial melodrama. The developments were alarming enough to call for his attention.

He realized that through his miscalculation of Ann’s sperm velocity, his dream of creating geometry incarnate was going to be thwarted. He did not sit idle. He sprang into action immediately to save Ann. “I am going to save her, if it is the last thing I do; I am going to perform the union of egg and Ann-sperm, if my life
depended upon it; my grand plans never get fizzled,” God told himself.

He immediately sent an army of Lilliputian angels of a few micrometers long, 750 million of them, to arrest the aspiring sperms and to escort the slowest sperm to Eliamma’s waiting egg. Only after the microscopic policemen entered the atrium of the uterus and made a mass arrest of the speeding sperms and escorted Ann to the waiting egg did the scene transform decidedly in Ann’s favor. The protest from the Y carriers was earth-shatteringly loud, but the little angel-cops couldn’t care less. Through a crowd of screaming Y carriers and applauding X carriers, Ann-sperm was led to Eliamma’s egg.

Ann was born, defeating all the sperms that previously danced and sang victoriously. The tables were turned. Revenge was sweet. Survival was not necessarily of the fittest—look at Ann. Through divine intervention, Ann was finally born.

Ann, though slow in thinking and action, was God’s creation and had her unusual face to prove it. Her siblings used to make fun of her nonstop. She was a constant source of entertainment and embarrassment to them.

One sister asked her once, “Ann, did you know the sky is up?”

Ann looked at the sky and is reported to have said, “Oh my God, how true! Sky is up all right!”

Her sisters and brothers did not need another amusement for weeks.

2
THE DEMONS IN THE BACKYARD

Deep in their heart, Thoma and Ann—especially Ann—had believed that their lives’ evening was bound to be peaceful and rife with happiness. They were looking forward to their old age, a sanctuary away from the cares of life. Ann prepared herself for that phase all along by regularly reciting the prayer of Cardinal John Henry Newman:

May He support us all the day long

Till the shades lengthen and the evening comes

And the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over

And our work is done.

Then in His mercy may He give us a safe lodging.

And a holy rest and peace at the last.

They were at last peaceful and content. They were given a safe abode to reap rest and peace, just as Ann whole-heartedly hoped for and fervently prayed for throughout her life.

For them, the evening of life played out in the form of ruminating about their difficult past. This mental exercise gave them joy. They knew that those reminiscences opened door to relive their past, this time without having to be saddled with heartache. God gave them a second chance to live their lives. They were lucky.

Thoma got accustomed to spending his time just by sitting in his easy chair, turning his back to the world, totally unaware of the cares of life. The chair was conveniently placed in the rear hallway. The hallway surrounded the entire home like a wraparound snake. It was a venue where visitors usually came to chat with the couple.

He just sat in his chair and stared intently in the distance and yet stared at nothing. There was speculation that he was having a face-off with invisible men who were trying to drag him back to his rental homes. Nothing would scare him more than going back to the rental homes, especially the one in Mannuthy.

The neighbors said that he was having a staring contest with demons that lurked in his backyard. They speculated that he was trying to stare them down as a way of exorcising them. They haunted him, as they always had been in the past. He liked to believe that his retirement life in Amballore was his reincarnated life where peace prevailed, an antithesis to his previous life—the life of rental in Mannuthy, and therefore he was baffled that the demons still haunted him. He appointed himself as a one-man exorcising team to get rid of the menace.