Amballore House (11 page)

“What is wrong with marrying a Canadian girl?” I asked her.

“Listen, you Canadian,” she mocked me and continued: “Even if you live away from us for a hundred years, you will always be one among us and we all insist that you do not sever the family ties. We want to see you continuing to be one among us, by marrying a Malayalee girl.”

Her argument had finality to it and I gave in, against my better judgment. I was torn between my own conviction that I should not jeopardize my friendship in Canada and my sister’s forcible argument that family ties should be honored, however far and however long one stayed away from one’s siblings. Curiosity also got the better of me and it propelled me to check out the possibility that a Kerala girl could be a better soul mate than a Canadian girl.

I was invited to the bride-to-be’s family for a social gathering. Typically, this gathering would be attended by extended families of the bride and the bridegroom.

The girl’s name was Latha. Her sprawling, luxuriant long black hair reminded me of a miniature Amazon forest. She was dressed in a sari. Her forehead was adorned with a huge, red bindi. Two ear rings the size of cathedral bells hung from her ears.

Kareena put all of us at ease, since she was the girl’s friend and knew her family well. They also liked the proposal, because I was Kareena’s brother. She introduced me to the girl and her family. I was in a group of my siblings: Kareena, Number-Six, Number-Eight, Number-Nine and Number-Ten. A lavish lunch was served by the bride-to-be’s family for us. The lunch had multiple elements of typical Kerala cuisine. I was seated across from the girl. Visiting a girl at her home and eating a lavish meal was part of the arranged-
marriage ritual.

Her beauty transfixed me. Instead of enjoying the culinary delight of Kerala, I was staring at her, with my half-opened mouth that refused to close, while my siblings were voraciously gulping down the fried fish, with their mouths gyrating in unison, as if acted upon by motors that refused to shut down.

Kareena, sitting by my side at the dining table, elbowed me in the ribs sharply and said, “Don’t stare at the girl; it is rude.”

The half-chewed rice spewed out of my half-open mouth by this sudden stabbing at my ribs, pain radiating out from the point of contact. My mouth contents landed on the girl’s forehead near her bindi. The mushy rice blobs then descended and landed on her cream-colored kanjipuram sari. This last act put a lid on my hopes of marrying the girl. She screamed and left the dining hall in disgrace and took refuge in the kitchen. She was followed by her concerned mother and younger sister. Her father stared at me hard and left the dining table in protest. I was in the company of just my siblings who merrily kept on chewing.

The rapidly chewing crew of my siblings was not aware of the rib-stab that I received from Kareena. They were surprised that I dared to spit my food at the host. They liked the food and were looking forward to having the girl as their future sister-in-law so that they could enjoy mouth-watering food she would cook in the future, just like the one they were having. Their plans just derailed.

My siblings were so taken aback by my unexpected and violent act that all of them stopped chewing simultaneously like synchronized swimmers, their half-open mouths frozen in mid-action as if someone hit the pause button of a remote control. Their mouths refused to continue chewing. This immobilization was the first of its kind ever since they started munching on the lunch. They were surprised and puzzled.

The ice was broken when someone in the group helpfully suggested: “You should not have spit at the girl for bad food.” He immediately resumed chewing.

Kareena offered me another stab at my ribs, winked at me, smiled
slyly, and continued eating.

Even though I was transfixed by the girl and even though I was disarmed by her beauty, I was rendered a zombie of inaction with a frozen mouth, which resulted in a Kerala-cuisine projectile making impact with her forehead and sari. This eventually shut down the prospects of a marriage. I was nevertheless thinking of a Canadian girl intermittently during the disastrous lunch. No doubt, it was an untimely time to ruminate over my romantic interlude in Canada; it was like double-crossing the girl I went to meet. However, those memories seized me and took control of me while I was desperately trying to act decently. Shame on me!

As you guessed, Latha told Kareena that she was not interested in marrying me. She did not want to spend a lifetime with someone who refused to eat with his mouth closed. Bad manners, case closed. Kareena conveyed the message to me.

I did not blame Latha.

I think that I owe it to you to explain what kind of Canadian memories gripped me during pennukanal and made me helpless in proceeding whole-heartedly in the pursuit of a Kerala romance.

***

It all started on a brutally cold Canadian day. If you were with me in my living room on that day of days, you would appreciate what I am about to reveal.

I am going to take you to a world supernatural and beautiful beyond comparison, a world as fascinating as it is mysterious, a world where your spoken words can freeze in the mid-air, and a world cool and tranquil as the arctic ice. I am talking about where I live, the great land of Canada.

This land is dear to our hearts. As Canadians, we are blessed to have the very first encounter of the laws of nature. In the profound silence that is so much characteristic of our lives, we get revelation of the innermost secrets of the universe. God spits out the laws of physics to us and to us only. We spit them out to the United States and the rest of the world. We play Moses to distribute the ten
commandments of physics. If you live here, you are bound to get enlightenment on the meaning of life. You do not need to meditate under the Bodhi tree to understand life’s riddles, as Siddhartha had to do once upon a time in India.

Living at the footsteps of the North Pole, we look down upon our good neighbor, The United States. We then wish she turns into a snowflake if only to form bondage and kinship born of snowfall camaraderie. If you want to disprove theories on global warming, you do not have to do research; just look at us. We hope to get the USA to join us to lead the world in the new ice age; we hope that our alliance, though frozen in nature, would be warm forever.

We stay on top of the world near the North Pole like a gigantic snow-flake. Santa Claus is our dear friend, living just to our north, protecting us from Polar bears. We do not have to dream of white Christmases like Bing Crosby sang of, because it is a given that we would have white Christmas unfailingly every year. In fact, we have white Christmas every day of the year!

If you do not believe what I say, just come and stay here. I tell you, you will never go back! Of course, I did not mean you will freeze to death here. On the contrary, you will fall in love! You will fall in love with the ice caps, you will fall in love with the snow-flakes and more importantly, you will fall in love with polar bears. I fell in love with a she-bear myself.

I am going to tell you that story of romance.

The total population of Canada is 16009. Like legendary lord Krishna, I have 16008 she-bear friends in Canada. Now you know why Canada has only one man and so many women.

You could possibly argue that this low Canadian population is a byproduct of the biting cold weather that drives out the humanity from here.

As I recollect, a mixed bag of hilarity and romance started unraveling one fine morning where I was living. That memorable morning set in motion a series of events in the future, which I became helpless to block or even to control. I became a speck of dust caught in a snowstorm of events and I started drifting down the
highway of life uncontrollably, unable to exercise my free will. You will see.

It was summer where I was living. Day was just breaking out. The snow was only five feet deep in the driveway. I had just woken up and was still half-asleep while sitting in my living room. I was looking outside, enjoying the supreme beauty of my snow blower. I was debating whether I should blow out the snow. To blow or not to blow—that was the question that haunted me. Hamlet of the to-be-or-not-to-be fame would readily have agreed with me.

The snowfall during the night was so heavy that it effectively shut down the road traffic. The city was yet to wake up to mobilize the snow ploughs to return life to normalcy. The snow in my front yard and the road were not separated by a sidewalk, since the sidewalk itself disappeared in the heavy snowfall. It was while seeing this unbelievable sight that I had the Hamlet moment.

At the same moment, I was besieged by an eerie sensation. Even though I was the only one living in the house, I suddenly got an uncomfortable feeling that somebody else was there in the living room with me. I was overtaken by an unsettling perception that someone was watching me from close quarters. Then I realized that I had left the door open overnight. Unknown to me, somebody must have slipped inside my home.

I turned around to where my peripheral vision led me to. There she was—a she-bear staring at me right in my living room! At least, that is what I imagined I saw, as my still-sleepy eyes sent rapid-transit information to my mind that conjured up the image of a she-bear. Later, when I would shake myself free from this momentary hallucination of sleepiness, I would realize that the intruder was none other than a female whose car got stuck outside in the snow. She came inside seeking help from a Good Samaritan, or at least a muscular Samaritan who could push her car around the snow dune of the Canadian winter wonderland.

She was covered in immaculate white snow. The snow-clad figure of a female wearing a parka whose open hood appeared to be the gaping mouth of a bear was all a semi-awake man like me could see
on that morning. This imprinted in my mind a tangible image of a bear and it stuck. The only way I could describe her to you is through the imagery of a she-bear.

My very first reaction, naturally, was fear. Only the other day I read in The Arctic
Times
that my neighbor was eaten alive by a polar bear. A shower of cold beads of sweat sprinkled profusely out of me, overtaken as I was by fear. But something was different about this bear, I realized, as I slowly stepped into the world of wakefulness. She stood out. There was something in her looks that told me that she was different from the rest. She was a paradigm of supernatural beauty endowed with an otherworldly grace. She walked into my living room, and, as I would realize later, she walked into my life itself.

She came to me with her feathery steps heralding a tomorrow full of promise and happiness. She walked in with the jingling music of her anklets, promise in her eyes and joy in my heart. Her dazzling smile resembled the brightness of a million twinkling stars that were sprinkled across the arctic sky. She was soft as a snow-flake, gorgeous as an autumn moon, and in sharp contrast to the color of the midnight sun. She was cool as icecaps. She was singularly beautiful. How she took my breath away!

I knew almost immediately that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her and with her only. It was love at first sight. I was intoxicated with love. Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined that I would set my eyes on such a ravishing beauty. Cupid was at work.

We met often after that first encounter. Her very presence triggered an avalanche of dreamy thoughts in my mind. I wrote the following poem, "An Ode to Tomorrow," to commemorate our first encounter and to celebrate our love-affair that spilled out of many todays and spread across many tomorrows.

The poem spiraled out of me, carrying my free-spirited elation at resurrecting from a long, boring existence, to be greeted by a burst of refreshing life with promise of romance and, hopefully, love.

Oh darkness, you the carrier of the evil

You held me hostage during freezing nights

While I longed for tomorrow’s sunlight

To wash away the many sins of your shade.

Many a night did I spend with my heart

Laden with anguish; this night won't pass

With no sight of tomorrow’s glittering sun

To light up my day to make me upbeat.

Oh hazy night, you’re the secret incarnate

You store in your heart many hidden plots

Covering earth like a black blanket

A contrast to daylight’s transparency.

Oh darkness, mistress of the mischievous night

You will vanish and tomorrow will set in

Lit with a bubbling hope and a bright morning light

From a smiling sun awake after a night-long slumber.

This poem officially heralded our love affair. She read the poem voraciously and daily. Our love-at-first-sight syndrome soon underwent metamorphosis to lead to a full-fledged Romeo-Juliet romance. One thing led to another, and soon we started going out on Friday nights. We went out for dinner at the Ice Caps restaurant.

We usually have a romantic, candlelit dinner. At dinner, she tries to eat me, thinking that I am her food. But then I apply my masculine charm and dissuade her from her love-driven murderous tendencies. I divert her attention to the Hungarian goulash we ordered. She eats the goulash along with the plate. The waiter-bear comes around and makes passes at her. I get jealous and shove my plate into his mouth. He gulps that down with relish and goes away happily,
leaving us alone.

I soon found that she was fixated with my credit card. Whenever I would leave my card in the bill plate for the waiter to pick up, she would grab it, and wolf it down. I then would perform Heimlich maneuver on her, which I learned from Canadian Heart Association’s cardiopulmonary resuscitation course. She would throw up the card along with the Hungarian goulash. I would then fish out my American Express Card from the mess she barfed out. The card would start talking to me, “Don’t leave home without me, buddy; better still don’t throw me to the wolves.” I bit the bullet when my bear girlfriend was likened to a wolf.

Usually I do not tip the waiter-bear. I leave my plate and a burned-out candlestick as my tip.

Folks, don't think that I did not notice that sneering look written on your face! Is that not for my mean habit of not tipping? But at least, I leave my plate as a tip. Lots of my graduate student friends from you-know-where do not even do that. They just take the plate home!