by John Harker
‘Go on, I would like to listen to the so called legend of the haunted mansion.’
‘This story is not for the ones who are weak at heart.’ Iyer said motioning his head towards Shiuli who was still lost in another world.
‘She has seen worse I believe and right now she is not even listening to us. Let’s hear the story.’ Shiuli clarified.
‘The year was…’ scratched his head, ‘1910 or 20.’
‘1920, the year was 1920.’ Shiuli interrupted, her gaze was towards the east.
Startled by her sudden involvement in the conversation, Pakhi looked at her niece who had gone back to her thoughts again.
Iyer continued, ‘Yes, it was 1920. I am very bad with dates and years. My grandfather narrated this story to me when I was just as old as she is.’ He said glancing at Shiuli. He continued,
‘His Highness Rajendranatha Varma, as a wedding gift for his beloved daughter- Sreevidya Devi, got this huge mansion built in the year 1920. Rajendranatha was an ardent admirer of the Victorian art and architecture; therefore, he hired the best man from London to prepare this masterpiece. It was the most expensive mansion in the entire region of Thirukochi until those Marwaris constructed that hotel in Kalamassery last year. The mansion aroused so much jealousy among His contemporaries that there were rumors about fellow rulers from Travancore and Mysore conspiring against the rise of the mansion. The king had a son from his previous marriage, Mrityunjaya, who displaced himself from his father’s affection after the king married his second wife (mother of Sreevidya Devi) soon after Mrityunjaya’s mother lost her life to illness. The act did not go well with a young Mrityunjaya who isolated himself from the rest of the world and started living on a diet of drugs and…’ Iyer paused and glanced at young Shiuli.
‘And what?’ inquired Pakhi.
‘I cannot say all that in front of this young girl.’ The fat man stated.
Shiuli got up from her chair and walked away to the table on the corner.
Iyer was relieved and he continued narrating the story, ‘He unheralded women as soon as he entered his adolescent years. He grew into an arrogant psychopath and everyone loathed him. Women were afraid of him. He always accused King Rajendranatha for the death of his mother and for being partial towards his daughter. Moreover, when Rajendranatha declared the alliance of Sreevidya Devi with the royal family of Travancore, Mrityunjaya revealed his intentions to marry a woman he kept. The woman belonged to a lower caste, therefore, it angered the king who ousted Mrityunjaya out of the family. The King did not invite the wrectched son to the grand wedding of his stepsister, which took place the following month. My grandfather tells me that that wedding had the most lavish procession that the kingdom of Thirukochi had ever seen.’ Iyer gave a pause to his story to take a sip of coffee from his steel tumbler.
Pakhi looked at her niece who had started staring at the sea from the far corner as well. Meanwhile, Ramaprasad Iyer contemplated on ordering another cup of coffee as he sipped the final drops from his current cup. He called a waiter and asked him to bring another cup of coffee in the native language. He turned back to Pakhi.
‘What happened after that?’ Pakhi asked inquisitively.
‘Doom dawned upon the entire mansion.’ Iyer said.
‘Doom?’
‘Yes, the bride, groom, their families, and almost a hundred odd guests stayed back in that mansion for the night; a night that never saw the light of day.’ Iyer looked at Pakhi’s face for a reaction.
A tide rose and struck the shore as Iyer continued narrating the story, ‘All the guests were found dead. Poisoned. The bride, the groom, the King, the Queen, all of them… dead!.’
‘Oh dear, so the entire lineage was lost?’ Pakhi asked.
‘Not the entire lineage. There was one person who was not invited to the wedding, one person who had all the motives to perform such a devious act, one person who could commit such a heinous act.’
‘Mrityunjaya?’ Pakhi exclaimed.
‘Yes, Mrityunjaya, the bride’s stepbrother who was ousted from the family a few days before the grand ceremony. Everyone suspected him for foul play. However, there was not any proof of that. Beneath sheets of charges and accusations against the notorious man, Mrityunjaya was still the sole heir to the property, another clear motive for the mass murder.
‘Lack of proof and a little corruption under the desk got young Mrityunjaya a clean chit from the court. Soon thereafter, he married a beautiful girl from the royal family of Tripunithura. People thought that the marriage to a splendid woman would reform the beast. However, what is crooked cannot be straightened.
As expected, he simply misused his power. Money gave him powerful supporters, but no friends. He started gambling heavily, his body took refuge in ritualistic and modern drugs whilst his lusty desires drove him to fetch needy women from neighboring states and cities like Kovai, Madurai, Madarasipattanam, Coorg, and Malabar. For few pots of gold, husbands would give up their wives and he brought one woman every month, on the night of pournami.’
‘What’s pournami?’ Pakhi interjected.
‘Pournami is the night of the full moon.’ Iyer explained.
‘But why full moon? Was he suffering from some kind of lunacy? It is well known that lunatics are at their peak on nights when the moon shines brightest. Asylums in medieval Europe tranquilized lunatic patients for days to prevent them from turning violent when the moon is high.’ Pakhi stated.
‘His mother succumbed to death on such a night.’ Iyer said.
‘Oh! That explains it.’
‘And what he did to these women was way beyond a normal person’s imagination. Upon bringing them here, he subjected them to extreme physical and mental torture. Rape was a word too kind to be used for his acts of brutality. Most of the time dead bodies of raped women were found floating in the sea, just below the cliff the following morning. The lucky ones escaped only to succumb to painful designate en route.
‘One such victim who survived gave birth to an illegitimate child. She kept the doomed baby at the doorstep of the mansion and was never seen again. Some people believe that she jumped into the sea. By this time, Mrityunjaya was thirty six and had already lost all of his property. His wife had passed away few years back, with whom Mrityunjaya had one son called Chandrasena. Mrityunjaya locked himself up in the mansion all the time; however, he found a soft corner for the baby. He called the baby boy Suryasena. Surya grew witnessing the beastly acts of his father. Another decade passed, Chandrasena grew up and was married. He had a son whom he named after his glorious great-grandfather’s popular name, Jagan. One day Chandrasena learnt from some of the fishing folk that he had a brother living in the mansion with his father. He immediately sent his men to the mansion. Upon reaching there they found Mrityunjaya lying dead with a naked woman. The young Surya was about to commit suicide when the sentries caught hold of him. When Chandrasena saw the young Surya’s face, he was left in utter shock.’
‘Why?’ Pakhi asked.
‘Suryasena looked exactly like his own son, Jagan. Like identical twins.’ Iyer revealed with utmost fascination that drooled from his mouth in the form of coffee froth.
‘But they were not twins; Suryasena was Jagan’s step uncle, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes, but they looked like twin brothers.’
Pakhi nodded in affirmation for she had done a research last year about non-fraternal genial resemblances which existed in apes and how a certain group of scientists were working together to disassemble the gene that gave physical and facial resemblances. They had performed their research on a dozen pair of people who had 90 percent resemblance and belonged to different generations of the same family.
Iyer continued ‘Chandrasena brought Surya home and raised him with Jagan, who was the same age as Surya. He gave both the boys equal amount of love, dedication, education and facilities. Both of them were sent to boarding schools and later attended the same college abroad. However, only one of them returned home. Surya drow
ned himself in the lake outside their university campus in London. This came as a big shock to Chandrasena for he loved Surya dearly. Jagan could not finish his education in London, so he returned to India. He continued his studies in Madras. The real story begins now.
‘Few months after Surya’s death, which many believe was suicide, people started seeing light and movement inside the abandoned mansion, and that too only on the night of the full moon. Some even heard moaning of women occasionally. Then one morning, the anglers witnessed a floating body of a naked French woman in the sea, brutally raped. They knew the ghost had returned. The ghost of the notorious Mrityunjaya or his ill-fated boy – either one of them visited the mansion to destroy helpless women.’
‘The frequent visitor…’ Pakhi whispered.
‘Yes, the frequent visitor some said. My grandfather was the caretaker of the mansion; he performed a great bhootamukta yajnya at the mansion to get rid of the evil soul that had lurked in after so many years. My grandfather was a learned man and was well versed in all mantra-tantras. It took seven days and six priests to drive away all evil from this mansion and then they locked this mansion with a sacred lock protected by a dwimukhi rudraksha. There was a limitation to dwimukhi rudraksha; it could only confine human souls to the boundary of its property. ’ Iyer said.
‘Is that why outsiders are not allowed on the island after sunset?’ Pakhi asked.
‘Exactly, but only on the nights of full moon, otherwise they are allowed.’ Iyer clarified.
The breeze from the sea was getting colder and thick layers of clouds were covering the sun. Shiuli had surrendered her senses unto the calmness of the sea, while Pakhi shivered at the chaos building up in the sky.
‘So, did the tantra stop the onslaught?’ Pakhi inquired.
‘Well, it did. For two years, nothing was heard about the visitor until that Englishman showed up. That foolish white man who mocked my grandfather and our gods. That idiotic Mr. Clifford.’
‘Mr. Clifford, Oh my God!’ Shiuli broke out into a sudden exclamation from the distance, ‘I left him in the mansion, on that table in the bedroom on the southwest.’
‘What? I thought you carried him with you.’ Pakhi said worried.
‘No, I did not carry Mr. Clifford with me. Please, I have to get him.’ She got off her chair and started leaving towards the mansion.
Pakhi ran to her and halted her on the way.
‘You are not going anywhere, dear.’ Pakhi commanded.
‘But I want him. I can’t just leave him there.’ Shiuli’s eyes had filled up, she burst into tears, ‘You know na… that was mom’s gift for me.’ Her eyes diluted like a kitten’s pupils and Pakhi could not resist emotional blackmail that came with it.
‘Fine, you are staying outside, Mr. Iyer and I will go inside and bring it. Is that clear?’ Pakhi asked as she gestured Iyer to accompany her up the hill.
Shiuli nodded and followed the grown-ups. Iyer seemed a little dejected upon having the women accompany him. He did not want them to go to the mansion again, the feeling of insecurity clearly showed on his thick face. As for Pakhi, this second trip to the mansion was twice as exciting and scary at the same time for now she knew many dreadful things about the mansion’s past.
As they walked on the sand, Shiuli held her aunt’s left hand. Pakhi looked at her niece. She looked weary and her hair was all dry and tangled. Something reminded her of the portrait she saw back in the mansion.
‘What is on your mind, Pishi?’ Shiuli asked her.
‘It’s rather weird to think of, but that picture on the wall...’ Pakhi recollected.
‘What about it?’
‘The woman that Iyer mentioned, she looked just like... like your mother. As I look at you right now, under the tinted light of that shy sun, I am reminded of those eyes…of…’
‘Lavanya Ghosh?’ Shiuli said.
‘Ghosh? No, her last name was Baxter, Is not that what Mr. Iyer told us?’
‘Well, I am sure that he has not told us everything.’
‘I thought you were not listening to us and what do you mean by everything?’ Pakhi asked as she took her hand away from Shiuli.
‘You will know… soon.’ Shiuli said and smiled. After all, she knew more about the visitor.
Chapter 31
It was always dark inside the palace and it smelled of damp wood everywhere. For Parosh Chandra Dutta, this was exactly a way of gratifying the senses. It reminded him of his summer vacations in Kolkata, back when he was a child. He loved visiting his grandfather, whose voracious sense of humor never aged a single day. His grandfather had a library in the attic where one could find the latest magazines to old unbound manuscripts from the days of Kalinga. Parosh was brought up in the heart of Delhi and every year he would wait for the month of May to arrive, for that was when the schools would close down for the summer break and his parents would take him to Kolkata, to his dearest grandfather. He was the man who inspired him to become a storyteller. His grandfather would always say; never leave a page unturned if you find a book and never leave a book untouched if you find a library. His grandfather passed away due to sodium deficiency during Parosh’s twelfth class preparatory examinations. He knew that his summers and hitherto visits to Kolkata would never be the same again.
Now the palatial home of the Varmas in Tripunithura was almost like a mini museum, with antiquities and scriptures dating back to the beginning of the 16th century. The caretaker of the house, Suresh Gopi, had mentioned that there was a private library on the day they had arrived in the city. Parosh had a terrible morning for when he woke up he could not find his daughter in bed. He alerted Gopi, Pappan and Pakhi, and together they looked in every nook and corner of the house, the street, inside the Poornathreeyasha temple, near the temple pond, and the church near statue junction. Alas, they could not find her anywhere. They were aware about Shiuli’s somnambulism, a sleeping disorder where the patients would arise from their sleep and walk or perform activities in a state of low consciousness. Pakhi suggested they look for her at the mansion where she had been lured mysteriously a night ago. Parosh dismissed her suggestion mockingly. However, the stubborn woman that she was, Pakhi instantly called up the caretaker Iyer on her phone and went down tracking her niece in the eastern dock of Fort Kochi.
An hour later Parosh got a call from his sister on his cellphone that his daughter was in the Clifford Mansion. Parosh breathed a sigh of relief. He sent Suresh Gopi to pick up Pakhi and Shiuli from Fort Kochi. Pappan had to leave early for his wife’s delivery. Parosh had the complete, partly renovated, palace to himself. He loved investigating his subjects, and this time he had the privilege to dig into the life of the most successful man in the history of Indian politics. In his twenties, Parosh instantly formed an incessant inclination towards communist principles and at the hem of this lusty inclination was MC Jagannatha Varma. He single handedly motivated an entire generation of Malayalee youth in the nineties to come out of their houses and appeal against the corrupt government that was evolving around the womb of the common man. The movement was quickly embraced by the youth of the entire nation and the man rose from a mere party worker for the communist party in a small town in Kerala to become the next prime ministerial candidate of India.
Parosh had a nice evening with the Varma family. The pleasantness, however, did not last long. The entire chapter of Shiuli’s disappearance took a toll on him. Parosh could stay in the town as long as he wanted, but he wanted to finish his work at the earliest and leave. He had set a deadline for his stay in Kerala. He had already wasted a day, and there was no way he could have ignored the casualty for it involved his daughter. He wished that he had not brought his daughter at all. And after the second event of his daughter’s disappearance he decided to speed up things. He wanted to leave as soon as possible or at least send her back with Pakhi to Gurgaon while Parosh would stay back a little longer. He had lost his wife a year ago; he could not afford to lose another loved one. The very thought of l
osing a loved one brought tears to his eyes.
He wiped off the tears and stepped inside the library. Although spots formed by whitewashing material filled the walls of the narrow corridor that led to the library, but the rest of the library was untouched. It had perhaps been untouched for centuries. It was a beautiful sight for any book worshipper; Parosh was a clergyman when it came to books. His grandfather would have loved to have his ashes placed in such a temple. The library was a good thirty feet in breadth and over fifty in length; the dimensions were larger than the base layout of his entire house. As soon as he entered the antique library, he was welcomed by rows of English classics on either side and the smell of damp moss. Some of them dated back to the seventeenth century and were original impressions, while others were recent reprints by Indian publishers. He could see a single rack placed perpendicularly to the ten parallel racks running across the length of the library. The rack was filled with indices, family albums and other legal documents. He picked one of the recent looking indexes and went through its pages; it was a typewritten one. He looked for family history and bloodline.
After running through few more indices he finally got he what he wanted in a shabby 1967 index. He dusted off the book's cover and it read;
VARMA DYNASTY, 1861-1963
The book was a fair documentation of all the vibrant rulers of the Varma dynasty, and the various members of the family that ranged from the very king to the farthest relatives of the distant cousin who was married off to Mysore.
He flipped through the first three pages and found a list in the fourth one. The pages were dark brown with age and almost as crisp as baked wafers. He quickly skipped to the penultimate page. The page depicted the royal family tree that started from the head of the dynasty in the year 1861 till 1963.
The list began with the name of Jagannatha Varma I who headed the dynasty from 1861 till 1895, the heir to the crown was his son, Rajendranatha Varma. He ruled for thirty years and then was followed by his son, Mrityunjaya in 1920. Parosh's subject, Jagannatha Varma was the grandson of Mrityunjaya Varma. However, there was a name on the lowest branch on the left side of the page that generated from Mrityunjaya Varma and it was scribbled over with black ink, as if to hide its very presence of the page. From his trouser's pocket, he brought out his carbon-rimmed specs and placed it on his nose. He focused hard to read what was typed beneath the scribbling. The branch generated from Mrityunjaya Varma, Jagannatha Varma's notorious grandfather, or so he heard from the Varma family in the brief meeting he had had last evening. He could identify a C in the beginning and an A at the end.
