Amballore House Read Online Free PDF Page A

in the backyard.
    The yard showcased green foliage and an abundant number of fruits and nuts such as jackfruit, mango, coconut palm, areca nut, cashew nut, pineapple, plantain, papaya, and black pepper. The backyard scene was a microcosm of the tropical paradise of Kerala and was a feast to the eyes.
    The ravishing beauty of Kerala that was the pride of Indian tourism was a lavish treat to the eyes and mind, an elixir to body and soul. Just being able to watch the exotic beauty of Kerala, day in and day out, in itself was an ideal retirement treat. Sitting in his chair and watching the supernatural beauty gave him something to do every day, something soothing and refreshing to the self. At last in his life, he got time to stop and smell the roses. So did Ann.
    Through his non-stop stare, Thoma was either building castles in the air or, more probably, just convincing himself that he was in the evening of life, meaning he already crossed the dream factory that manufactures the fantasies of youth and the illusions of life. He was convincing himself that he was in a stable, realistic-looking terrain of life, devoid of the traps of the youth and the slippery slopes of the middle life. He was ruminating over the multitude vicissitudes of life, over the various hard rocks life had thrown at him, over the various curveballs of life that he untriumphantly faced and retreated from. He was unlike Alexander the Great, who conquered challenges in his path tirelessly, giving rise to the expression “He came, he saw, and he conquered.”
    As for Thoma, he came, he saw, and he returned. That is what he did with life: he just came back after seeing the challenges that life had prepared for him in a gigantic row. Not a tactful retreat but a cowardly, shameful, and disheartening retreat.
    ***
    Ann was wearing a
chatta
, a mundu, and
mekkamothiram
which hung ceremoniously from her ears. The oversized chatta gave ample room for her drooping breasts to follow gravity and reach the level of her belly button. The earrings were given to her by herparents when she married Thoma. It did not take too long for Thoma to pawn the gold ornaments and eventually sell them. It was after they moved from the rental home in Mannuthy to their own home in Amballore that she was able to buy new ornaments by selling part of the land Josh bought for them.
    She was chewing on a betel leaf spiced with white lime paste. Adding flavor to the mix were areca nuts. She could chew on this mix like cows chewing on grass and that too, until the cows came home. She then spat out the red liquid into a receptacle made of brass and shaped like an hourglass. When the brass receptacle was not handy, she just spat into the backyard. Chickens and ducks assembled around the red spot Ann made to gossip about Thoma. It was their water cooler.
    Thoma hardly took notice of Ann when she was moving about him, since his attention was riveted on the nothingness that lay in front of him, like an unending carpet. While he was sitting in his chair and staring incessantly at the vast sky, bare like a newborn baby, Ann to him was nothing but a shade moving in front of him like a character in the shadow plays he used to watch when he was a boy. She was always a figure out of his focus, or worse still, out of his view.
    He preferred it that way. He could not stand seeing her hanging around him. He felt that his peace was compromised by her presence, especially when she was pregnant and was moving around slowly.
    One day after their tenth child was born back in Mannuthy, Thoma told his wife, "I would have been better off if you laid an egg and sat on it for nine months to hatch. I would not have had to see you for nine months." This opinion came from a thoughtless and cruel man, as Bhavany, their neighbor would comment upon hearing this.
    Ann made a quick calculation in her mind and concluded that if she were to hatch the egg, she would have been out of sight of her husband for ninety months total,