Amballore House (9 page)

***

During the earlier days of their stay in Mannuthy, Thoma used to be very wild, especially towards Ann. It was typical of him to barge into home at the end of the day, totally drunk with
kallu
. He would then pick some reason to start a fight, such as dinner not being ready or the prawn not being fried fully.

One evening during supper, he stood up and shouted at his wife, “This rise is overcooked. Make it evenly cooked, you whore!”

While the assembled children looked at the mad man with fear, expecting a blow to land on Ann any time, Ann replied: “I cannot make overcooked rise less cooked. That would be a miracle.” Bhavany, the good neighbor, would hear about this exchange the very next day and would have a hearty laugh. She agreed that the undercooked rise could be worked on to make it properly cooked,
whereas the overcooked rise would have crossed the limits, and could not be altered to evenly cooked status.

Thoma was in no mood for smart aleck statement from Ann. He stood up and started attacking the simple woman.

He unleashed a barrage of beating by forehand and backhand towards the undefended one-woman army of Ann. She would start moving backward to duck the blows, but then Thoma would keep up the pace, moving forward in synchrony with Ann’s backward march. The forehand blow would tilt Ann’s face to her right; a rapid follow-up by his backhand would tilt her face to her left. These rapid-fire blows would turn Ann into an owl, looking to her left and right in quick succession. Soon, Ann would reach the end of the room, up against the wall, both literally and figuratively. She would be stranded. As if on cue, she would turn back and resume her backward march to the opposite wall, and Thoma would follow her religiously. Soon the opposite wall would block Ann, and she would resume her backward march by turning around, Thoma following her steps in perfect coordination. He would be screaming at her all along, and she would be weeping helplessly.

The kids, the whole gang of them, would be scared out of control by now, and they would start crying one after another, and soon the entire group would cry in unison, staging an unorchestrated symphony of loud bawling. This scared group, watching the beating drama, would shout at Ann to block the blows with her hands, but Ann would be too absorbed in the blow absorption and too transfixed and devoured by fear to hear them. They would then send their representative, George the eldest, to defend Ann.

George would approach Thoma and pull his mundu to get him away from Ann and Thoma would turn around and push George so hard that he would travel with a speed equaling light velocity towards the dining table and toppling it along with the overcooked rice that Ann prepared for the dinner. George would pick himself up and stand there as if in daze. But the younger siblings would push him to the battle zone again, to protect their mom.

“I will make fresh rice for you; stop beating me,” Ann wailed at her
husband, but Thoma would have nothing of it. He continued bombing the enemy target.

George would expertly place himself between the invading army and the retreating army. This would enrage Thoma even more. He would switch gears and start delivering freshly minted blows to George. Soon, George, in perfect imitation of Ann, would tilt his head leftwards and rightwards and start walking backwards, another receding owl in action. This would allow Ann to take a badly needed break. All the little children would approach Ann and rub her face with their little hands, consoling her and crying at the same time. They would feel insecure, unable to take the horror scene of their elder brother and mom being under attack by a drunken soldier.

Ann would make use of the break and start preparing rice, giving instruction to Rita and Kareena to make sure that it was not overcooked.

The mother would not be able to handle the sight of her eldest son being beaten by a maniacal father. She would soon reenter the battle zone, and interpose herself between Thoma and George. Once more, Thoma would switch gears and start beating Ann, abandoning George. George would get out of the battlefield gracefully and take a break, while war was still raging, with his siblings wailing out of control.

George would collect his siblings, and all of them would step forward and hold on to Thoma’s mundu. Some of them threw themselves at his feet, blocking him from proceeding with his one-man marching band. These combined acts decelerated the drunkard’s forward march and Ann would get away from his arm swings. Some children would then run to her and escort her outside her belligerent husband’s blows which were still continuing, except he was beating the hell out of the air. He was too drunk to note that he was no more beating Ann. He appeared to be blowing the hell out of the air, or at least catching invisible mosquitos.

***

Thoma often visited the toddy shop on his way home from work.
He not only got drunk in the shop, but also carried a bottle of kallu with him. “One for the road,” He would place the order to the toddy shop owner in a singing voice and with dancing steps, at the end of a heavy drinking in the shop. The owner would faithfully pack up the bottle and hand it over to Thoma. “Don’t drop it and break it, Thoma.” He would look at Thoma with concern and make the request. At home, he would drink the packaged alcohol. None dared to approach him while he was in the company of kallu. “My bottle is my girlfriend, and I go to bed with her.” Thoma would proudly declare to the world. He would go to bed in the company of his girlfriend.

Ann and her little children would sometimes dare to approach his bed while he was snoring, extricate the bottle from his grip, praying to Mother Mary for their safety throughout this operation. They then would drain out the white liquid and replace it with starch water that Ann drained out from kanji she prepared for the family. They would all be scared like hell when this delicate operation was underway, like they were approaching a sleeping lion in its den, resigned to be killed any time.

“This kallu is not good like it used to be,” Thoma would declare to the walls later at night when he would take a sip between his sleeps. The family, if they were still awake, would struggle to suppress their laughter.

***

George always was family’s favorite son. He was the first support that Thoma had, to step in to share his grueling task of providing for his wife and children. Unassuming like Vareed, his grandfather; humble; and hardworking, George took no credit for the good things that he did to support his siblings.

George sacrificed his own life, foregoing an all-important education in order to support his father in meeting his fatherly duties. Ann knew that their first-born was selfless and therefore wished him all the best in his life and thanked God for giving them a son like him. She never forgot the scenes of George blocking Thoma when he was beating her in Thoma’s younger days. Ann remembered sadly
that George was taking all the beatings from her husband to protect her. This remarkable scene would often play out in Ann’s mind like on a silver screen.

Thomas was the eldest son of George. It broke everyone’s heart to learn that Thomas met with a traffic accident that took away his life. It would happen many years after the episode where George defended his mom from Thoma’s blows.

Thomas was married and living with his young wife and their twin sons. He was in his thirties, and the year was 2006. When he was riding his bike that day, he was full of excitement because of an upcoming birthday celebration that he had planned for his twin sons. He was lost in thought. That is when a big truck came hurtling down from the opposite side and sent him flying.

He would still have been with his young family, seeing to his twins growing up and giving support to his young wife, if it were not for that disastrous accident. It is one thing seeing people dying of old age and it is a totally different thing seeing young life being snatched away. But that is what happened to Thoma’s grandson, Thomas. Anyone with a heart is bound to cringe at the thought of the tragedy happening to a young life. A father and mother should not be cursed to live to see their son’s death.

6
A CULTURAL PASSAGE

This is Josh. I live in Canada. I’d like to tell you my story in first person. Talking to you face-to-face is like writing a personal letter and I believe ** personal letter is the most intimate way of communicating. I am going to use this opportunity to tell you what is on my mind. Hope you don’t mind.

To understand what it means when I tell you that to get out of the Mannuthy home was like paradise gained, you ought to have been with me as my sibling, living there with me, breathing the same air as I was, and battling innumerable moments of hurdles that our combined miserable existence presented unfailingly, with no hope in sight. But lucky you, you were not, and therefore you may not fully comprehend when I tell you that just to get out of there to anywhere, not necessarily to somewhere where sun shone, was sunshine in itself. Simply to dream while I was veiled in despair was a dream come true. While living there, I dreamed for the sake of dreaming, knowing very well that that was all what I could hope for, while the rest of the world knew that there was a tomorrow when their dreams would come to fulfillment.

Life was robed in the gloom of misery so much so that unhappiness was expected to be an indispensable part of even childhood. We did not know anything better personally. Nevertheless, we were aware that it existed elsewhere, judging from the happy looks and smiling faces of our friends in the school. I was steadily sinking into desperation, along with my siblings. We were at the end of the road, lost and unsure of what to do. We were up against the proverbial wall.

It was while some of us were thus contemplating suicide born of desperation that postman came knocking at the door. He carried a letter from a Canadian university. The letter stated that I was offered graduate fellowship at that institution. This news was so earth shattering that for a couple of days, I could not eat or drink. I was like a little boy, overjoyed at an unexpected gift from Santa Claus on the Christmas Eve.

It became big news in Amballore. At that time in history—that is, 1975—going away from India was like getting into heaven. Going away from my family would be like attaining the seventh heaven. Amballore citizens believed that I was going to heaven even before I died. Even one-eyed Chettiar came to our rental home and congratulated me. He was happy that our family would no more be overdue on rental payments.

That letter meant a lot of things and changed course of events in my life and in our lives. Holding the letter in my hand, a letter that told me of an unbelievable opportunity, a letter that promised me a future far away from Mannuthy —it was like capturing a moment of magic. The letter was like Aladdin’s lamp that I was able to invoke the genie with. The genie would grant all my pent-up desires and fulfill all my dreams.

Looking back, I know the letter was more important than the passport that I would later get to let me out of the country. The letter was the passport of my life itself, letting me out of misery, out of starvation and out of the utter desolation that I had known all too well.

I got my Indian passport and then traveled to New Delhi to get Canadian student visa. I was in cloud nine, counting days, then hours and then minutes before I would fly out of the country to a land of my dreams.

My mind was filled with thrill at the very thought of traveling to the other side of the globe. It just fascinated me to be on that side of the planet where I would be awake when India fell asleep and vice versa. I had visions of riding far above the earth in a magical carpet, floating where feathery clouds silently lived, gliding over continents and oceans and into a mysterious land called Canada. Soon, I was flying from Bangalore to Mumbai by Indian Airlines, from Mumbai to London by British Airways and from London to Toronto by Air Canada.

This was the very first time I flew, let alone such an adventurous flight, over continents and oceans to the farthest point on earth from Mannuthy. Well, close to it, anyway. I found it exciting that I was
going to fly over Africa and Europe and land in England, the land of Shakespeare, Keats, Wordsworth, Dickens, Thomas Hardy, P.G. Wodehouse and Sir Isaac Newton. I never thought when I read their books or when I studied physics that one day I would be landing on the soil that nurtured these geniuses. In London, I had dinner in a fish-and-chips diner in the hotel. I remember that I stayed in a hotel of the name Penthouse.

A giant Air Canada plane carried me from London to Toronto the next morning. I was once more on my magical flying carpet, taking me to the skies far above, and genie invisible traveling with me, at my beck and call, ready to appear and grant me anything my heart desired for. The transatlantic flight faithfully carried me over the turbulent waters of the Atlantic and into Canada. I could see the restless waves beating against the coastal Canada in their picture-perfect magnanimity. I looked forward to seeing a land far different from Kerala, a land almost as big as a continent, spreading all the way from the Atlantic coast provinces to the majestic British Columbia province on its Pacific coast; the land defined by the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans on its east and the west respectively, and by the Arctic ocean on its north. It was the land of snowfalls; the land of multiple lakes; the land of vast prairies; and the land of the imposing Pacific Northwest, rightly called a land of supernatural beauty. The profound silence of the unending snow-covered expanse of Canada would be in sharp contrast to the noisy Kerala that I was accustomed to. Its huge size was in wide variance to Kerala, a small state in India.

My feelings upon flying to Canada, far from the madding crowd of Mannuthy, were very similar to those of my sister Kareena, who once upon a time had left Mannuthy to take up a job with the central government. I remembered the letter that she had written describing her journey in a train, feeling like an escapee from a prison, going to a land of the unknown, yet feeling like she was going to heaven, solely because she had left the hell that was all that Mannuthy life had been. I felt that history was in remaking, that I was in her shoes, feeling and thinking the very same things, feeling elated that I was escaping from damnation. Whereas she
was riding in a train while thinking those thoughts, I was flying. However, we were both in the same boat, uniquely blessed to be let out to the world of possibilities and elated at seeing the expanse of the world outside Mannuthy. We celebrated our freedom just like the spirit Ariel did when Prospero released him from the tree he was imprisoned in by singing his song of freedom in Shakespeare’s Tempest: