Amballore House Read online

  Thekkumthala’s magical-realist comic-cosmic phantasmagoria welcomes readers to a bizarre community in India, where a notoriously haunted landmark mansion sees UFO aliens, disappearances, drug crimes, murder, and madcap paranormal phenomena.

  In the Malayalee town of Amballore in Kerala, India, the unbelievable, the mythological, and the mundane riotously coexist. Amballore House, a five-acre relic from the days of the British Raj, is the neighborhood’s haunted mansion; it boasts a history of trespassers disappearing or drowning in the well. The house sits at the terminus of a boulevard called Hells Highway, a road adorned by accursed cult temples, the lunatic asylum, graveyards, and sylphlike spirits who dance to the music of popular Indian movies.

  …

  The highly elastic narrative leapfrogs back and forth between 1960 and 1988 with several recurring characters, most notably the elderly couple of Vareed and Eli. They are part of a family whose ancestors have been regularly abducted by aliens going back 5,000 years. Since their own ET abductions, Vareed and Eli have been systematically returning to Earth to kidnap the best minds of humanity and send them off-planet via a space-time wormhole beneath Amballore House, serviced by a loyal retinue of robots.

  …

  The crazy servings of sci-fi, over-the-top crimes and courtroom inquests, distorted folk beliefs, boondocks gossip, errant reportage in the Amballore Times, inferior scholarship by the region’s university community, and lots and lots of toddy drinking take on a new light

  …

  The blend of regional flavor, fantastic whimsy, and pathos will strike readers with a taste for riotous exoticism stirred with tabloid tropes.

  A mad masala of mythology and absurd mayhem that takes an unexpectedly poignant twist.

  — Kirkus Reviews

  Jose Thekkumthala

  © 2015 Jose Thekkumthala

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1516874846

  ISBN 13: 9781516874842

  TO THE READER

  Be prepared to laugh, to cry, and to be frightened. Be ready to be mesmerized by the supernatural. Be willing to the earth’s center, and to an intergalactic world millions and millions of light-years away. Don’t stop there. Be prepared to go as far as your imagination will let you! Be prepared to be blown away by the sheer wildness of unbridled fantasy!

  Amballore House, a mysterious house at the end of Hell’s Highway, will imprison you in a chilling world of horror. The Midnight Express, which appears unexpectedly at the Amballore bus station en route to Amballore House, sows terror just by its mere arrival. It then embarks upon a scary expedition that takes it through Hell’s Highway. Even Orpheus of Greek mythology, who fought the damned entities, and survived on the way to Hade’s underworld, could not have survived the Hell’s Highway scenes, let alone confront the challenges posed by the unsettling Amballore House.

  Then there is the story of a family that will rivet you with its unforgettable moments of pathos, laughter, tears, failure, starvation, arrogance, greed, betrayal, tragedy, doom, cancer, and death. But then hope appears with a lantern to show the way. The principle of keeping on hoping if only to keep on living was found to be an oasis of an idea to them to see through the mirages of life, and to ride out the traps lined up by fate.

  The family’s story reveals that the unfailing quest for hope prepares one to face catastrophe, even though the ultimate terminator, death, will eventually fell you if you happen to be alive! The family tale is engrossing in itself, presenting ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances and forming a showcase of enduring human strength.

  .

  A rare and unlikely potpourri of Indian mythology, the Kerala civilization, evolutionary theory, and the general theory of relativity presents itself to take the reader through an unbelievable voyage of suspense, crime, and humor. Readers get a glimpse of the historic times of British rule in India; the formation of Kerala State, with its footprints in Indian mythology; and the Amballore dynasty, with its saga woven into the fabric of an advanced civilization that mankind is dreaming of.

  There are unforgettable characters that will mesmerize you with their tenacity, forbearance, blind faith, and scheming minds. You will have close encounters with noble human traits, such as devotion, sacrifice, resolve, and unabated optimism.

  This book is guaranteed to carry you from sunrise to sunset and beyond as if you are possessed, as if you are obsessed with the idea of attaining immortality. You are hereby promised the fountain of youth. Conquering eternity is within the realms of possibility—I promise!

  Yet you will wish that you had not followed the intriguing Midnight Express so that you had not had a face-to-face encounter with the horrifying spectacles of Hell’s Highway and the unsettling horrors of Amballore House. You will wish you had not opened this book so that you had not been devoured by a tremor of terror traveling from the pit of your stomach and up your spine to infiltrate and vanquish your heart, to shake you to your very foundation.

  Beware!

  This book is dedicated to three girls in my life: my wife, Jennifer, and my daughters, Lisa and April, who are the center of my world and whose laughter fills my life.

  I am grateful to Krish and Rachel for their support.

  CONTENTS

  PART I — AMBALLORE THOMA

  1 THE EVENING OF LIFE

  2 THE DEMONS IN THE BACKYARD

  3 FROM KAREENA, WITH LOVE

  4 OLD MAN MISERY

  5 THE MARCH OF OWLS

  6 A CULTURAL PASSAGE

  7 THE SKY IS FALLING

  8 INTO THE GRAVE, TOGETHER

  9 A GARLAND OF SUNSETS

  10 A GENERATIONAL RECAST

  11 THE CLASS REUNION

  12 THE WEDDING

  13 THE KING COMES TO ONAM

  14 A LONG GOOD-BYE

  PART II — THE EXTRATERRESTRIALS

  1 THE DISAPPEARANCE

  2 KERALA’S ORIGIN PER AMBALLORE UNIVERSITY

  3 HELL’S HIGHWAY AND AMBALLORE HOUSE

  4 A FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH

  5 WORMHOLE AND KALLU, THE EXOTIC MATTER

  6 ROSANNA

  7 THE MIDNIGHT EXPRESS

  8 THE WORLD OF YESTERDAYS

  9 THE CARDIOLOGIST

  PART III — AMBALLORE HOUSE MYSTERIES

  1 SAM−SOM’S EMPIRE

  2 AMBALLORE INVESTIGATION BUREAU

  3 A RELIC OF THE BRITISH RAJ

  4 A KAMIKAZE MISSION

  5 THE ARREST

  6 THE TRIAL AND JUDGMENT

  7 REVOLT ALONG HELL’S HIGHWAY

  8 VAREED PAYS A VISIT

  9 A ROBOT AND A COYOTE

  10 AN UNENDING FALL

  11 THE REVELATION

  12 MURDER IN THE GRAVEYARD

  13 THE DOUBLE VISION

  14 THE INSURGENT ROBOT

  15 BLACKMAIL AND A SMILE

  PART I

  AMBALLORE THOMA

  1THE EVENING OF LIFE

  Thoma was relaxing at his home, sitting in his chair and facing the backyard, one fine morning in Amballore Town in Kerala in the year 1987. The yard showcased innumerable coconut palm trees and other tropical trees and plants. “‘Kerala’ means ‘land of the coconut palm tree.’” He remembered his Malayalm teacher explaining this in primary school long ago. He was an empty nester now, all his children having left the nest after getting married. He was living with his wife, Ann. They were in the evening of their lives.

  Once upon a time, way back in their younger days, they did not know meaning of the phrase "the evening of life." Ann was quite surprised to hear the term, and was confused.

  The only “evening” they knew was the widely understood evening in a day, when husbands started coming home from work, and wives started preparing supper. In th
e evening, All India Radio would broadcast the evening news and play Malayalam movie songs. The appetizing aromas of fried fish and boiled tapioca would fill the air. Somewhere in the distance, devotional hymns would be broadcast too loudly not to take notice of. The sun, the workaholic of the day, would paint itself orange and red prior to taking a dip in the Arabian Sea for a much-needed evening bath.

  "Thoma, what does ‘evening of life’ mean?” Ann asked her husband a few days after their marriage.

  He was her source of information in everything except the matters of Catholic Church and religion. He, a self-proclaimed atheist, never visited church willingly and knew nothing about religion.

  Not to know the answer to her question was humiliating and belittled his masculine pride. Therefore, he had some kind of answer handy, whether right or wrong. Sometimes he evaded answering by sneering at her for asking stupid questions, even though they were legitimate questions, far from being irrelevant or stupid.

  Thoma did not have an answer this time. So he came up with one: “Your mother’s ass; that is what ‘evening of life’ means,” he told her emphatically and spat at her.

  She deftly moved aside like a spring chicken. There was such finality to his answer that Ann did not dare pursue her question. Spitting meant “end of conversation.”

  Now, in their seventies, having settled down in the town of Amballore, they both understood what the “evening of life” meant. For one, they were in the evening of life. Thoma was in the evening of life enjoying the rare phenomenon of peace and tranquility, which had managed to elude him from day one of his life. The same went for Ann.

  What they did with life leading to its evening was a bizarre story. To them, life proved not to be a game of musical chairs, a simple game that could be played with abandon and little planning. Their lot was not the luxury of a simple life; it was riddled with challenges that kept on coming like the Energizer bunny. Nevertheless, they ran in circles as if they were playing musical chair. They ran around a bunch of chairs that life arrayed in front of them. Instead of picking a proper one to sit and relax, they went around and round in circles, unable to make a choice.

  Thoma and Ann were on a perennial quest for rental homes throughout their lives, because they could not hold on to the one they already had. This was because they had a rift with the landlord for not paying timely rent or, for that matter, for not paying at all.

  After Thoma fell out with his siblings because of an inheritance dispute and the consequent ejection from his own ancestral home in Amballore by his siblings, he was on the run. He moved out with Ann, carrying their little children. After spending twenty-three long years shuttling back and forth between rentals—virtually leading a nomadic life, they made a return to Amballore, a triumphant return, to occupy a home bought for them by their fourth child Josh. That happened in the year 1975 when he sent money from Canada while studying.

  They were relieved that finally God gave them a piece of land they could call theirs, and through that piece, a long-overdue peace. They wanted that rare piece of contentment in the evening of their lives.

  Thoma never settled down to one rental, always moving out to a new one as if he was getting rid of an old habit. He would then be promptly cast out of there by the new landlord, like a termite would be by a terminator. He was always on the go. His brother Inasu claimed that Thoma was a modern-day version of the Hindu god Mahavishnu, since he migrated from rental to rental just like lord Vishnu transitioned to successive entities of the ten-incarnation cycle, including Fish, Turtle, Boar, Sphynx, Vamanan, Parsuraman, Raman, Krishnan, Budhan and Kalki.

  By the time he was done with numerous rentals prior to landing in a house he could call his own, he had gotten acquainted with people in every nook and corner of Trichur District. He knew every landlord in the district—not that he ever cared to chat with any of them, having built uneasy relationships for rental contract violations.

  If Sakthan Thampuran, the renowned king of Cochin of yesteryear, had not cleared weeds and wilderness in order to create habitable land in and around Trichur, Thoma would have run out of houses to rent.

  Inasu said that Thoma and Ann convincingly established that the earth was round, because they came back to where they started; they came back to Amballore. As for Ann, it was for the first time that she learned that the earth was round. All along she had believed that the earth was flat.

  The saga of Thoma and Ann victoriously returning to Amballore was reminiscent of the triumphant return of Napoleon to Paris from the island of Elba, a return to freedom from exile. So the citizens of Amballore believed.

  ***

  There were three of them in the house: Thoma, Ann, and Subashini. Subashini was the parrot who was caged and kept near Thoma to give him day-long company.

  Subashini lived with them and never left them. She filled their empty nest literally and figuratively. She was their lifelong companion, having gone through thick and thin—mostly thin—with them and never abandoning them. Casting her lot with them was against her better judgment. Subashini was smart enough to know this, though a birdbrain.

  She came to their lives long ago, in the year 1960, to be precise. Vareed and Eli, Thoma’s parents, donated Subashini to them. She was a macaw, a breed not usually found in Kerala. She was a fifteen-year-old teenager when she flew into their lives. Now she was in her forties, old age for that species.

  She was a very smart fortune teller once upon a time. She picked cards to predict the futures of folks who visited the family. Thoma kept a deck of cards at his home. The feathered friend would appraise the visitors, sending a critical, quizzical look at them, as if they were under cross-examination and she was the prosecution lawyer. She then picked a card out of the deck Thoma held in his hands. This card foretold the futures of the visitors.

  What started as a pastime soon became a means of livelihood for Thoma. He started making serious money when hordes of visitors, including friends, acquaintances, and strangers, visited him to learn what kind of fate the future held for them. The pair became popular fortune tellers, because the bird was able to correctly pick cards that predicted the future and described the past equally well.

  Subashini became sensationally famous for her astounding skill. Everyone was impressed. Some of them regularly visited the pair.

  As time rolled by and as she became old, she started making mistakes. People attributed this to her advanced age. She started having memory loss like an Alzheimer’s patient.

  The last straw for Thoma was when the feathered friend picked a card and claimed that the client was the mother of ten children. The client was, in fact, a man. He belonged to the local police force, and he was unmarried, let alone with ten children. Thoma immediately pulled the plug and decommissioned Subashini from fortune telling business. She had come a far cry from her golden days of youth, when eager crowds waited to know her predictions and accepted them like the words of the Holy Bible, with no questions asked.

  Thoma, however, loved to have a talking bird as his constant companion, whether she accurately foresaw the future or not, whether she was affected by memory loss or not. She was given her new job as Thoma’s companion.

  “You are better company than Ann,” Thoma told Subashini. “None is worse than Ann,” he emphasized by rewording the first sentence.

  He meant to make the bird happy through these introductory pleasantries, unaware of the convoluted way of rolling out a welcome red carpet to his new employee.

  The birdbrain, no pun intended, immediately broadcast the news. “None is worse than Ann,” Subashini repeated loudly after Thoma. His wife was livid, but she dared not confront him.

  Thoma put down Ann occasionally because he thought his masculine pride got a boost by that act.

  Subashini constantly watched him, staying close to him in her cage, which hung from the ceiling in the circular hallway. Her cage was her castle, her paradise. Thoma and Subashini became close buddies. She imitated him and anyone who came near him.
She made public announcements on Thoma’s day-to-day activities like a live news bulletin. She greeted visitors.

  She successfully imitated Thoma in all his speech and actions, except in spitting. When Thoma spat, which was often, she tried to spit, and a shrill, whistling sound came out of her. The birdbrain did not know that she was not biologically programmed to spit.

  “It takes a real man to spit,” Subashini repeated Thoma, who made the statement upon her failure to imitate him.

  “Birdbrains cannot spit,” she repeated after Thoma.

  Thoma had a feeling it would stay that way with his feathery friend, since it was hard to teach an old dog (or an old parrot, for that matter) new tricks. Thoma knew he was inimitable when it came to the art and science of spitting. He was the undisputed king of the spit world.

  ***

  Rita was their eldest daughter and second child. She married Tim years ago and settled down after marriage in a nearby town when Thoma and Ann were living in a rental home in Mannuthy. People believed that Rita was leading an unhappy life. This was because Thoma could not offer Tim the dowry money he had promised. This caused rift between the father and the daughter, and some unpleasantness between the newly-wed Rita and her husband.

  Rita and Tim were unhappy, because the couple did not have a child. It was a natural expectation of parents at that time in the sixties that the newlyweds would have a child when ninth month rolled around after the wedding. Both Thoma and Ann were concerned. Ann prayed daily for them to be blessed to have a child. She promised to the patron saint of Mannuthy church that she would donate one thousand rupees once a child was born. She kept on praying and waiting, only to come to the bitter realization that she did not have to donate the promised thousand rupees to the church. Ann was well aware of the rising heap of unresponsive prayers she routinely offered to the patron saint, and this added one more to the pile. Disillusionment was the outcome of the unanswered prayer.

  “Your patron saint and God will dump your prayers in their trash bins,” Thoma, the atheist, mocked his wife.