Take the diversion from Amboori's Poochamukku junction in Kerala's Thiruvananthapuram district and within 100 metres, on the left, is the house of rubber merchant C D Thomas Chirackathottil.
It is a neatly kept single-storey house with glossy white-tiled sit out, a sloping tiled shade, sturdy looking walls and a nice little garden in front.
This house has come right upon the ruins of another, a larger one that was more than double the size. The original was crushed in a landslide nearly 23 years ago, on November 9, 2001, when a flat-topped elephant-sized rock that slipped from its perch atop Kurishumala came crashing down the mountain slope flattening houses, uprooting trees and blasting small rock mounds.
Now 75-year-old Thomas's house was at the base of the slope, and the fourth and the last house the killer rock crushed. Twenty-four of Thomas's closest relatives, who had gathered inside on a special occasion that rainy night, were buried under tonnes of landslide debris in a flash. "It was as if our house was a rat trap that suddenly shut over us," Thomas said. Next day, November 10, was his 26-year-old son Binu's engagement.
Thomas was the only one who survived, his upper body saved by a large broken beam that leaned inches over him like a saviour's hand. Thomas was left alone with the dead.
He lost everyone -- his wife, his eldest daughter and son (his second child, a daughter, had died earlier), his son-in-law, his two grandchildren, his brother, the children of his brothers, and his wife's close relatives who had arrived for the next day's engagement from places like Pala, Kanjirappally and Alappuzha.
Dreadful silence
The tragedy happened around 8.45 pm on Friday night. "It was raining heavily, like it had never before," Thomas said. Later, it was revealed that within two hours 82.4mm rainfall had soaked the Kurishumala slope behind Thomas's house, the highest rainfall ever recorded in the area.
"We had our dinner and all of us were chatting," he said. His eldest daughter (Beena) had arrived at noon that day from Pune with her husband (Romio) and two children (Felix, 4, and Leon, 2). His younger brother C D Sebastian was there, and Sebastian's three sons (Melvin, Nicholas and Joseph) and another brother’s son, Jojo, were teasing Binu about the teacher he was about to get engaged to.
"I still don't know how it happened. There was a sudden sound. Before we could get up the house just fell upon us," Thomas said. "Then, there was no sound. It was silence as I remember it. Before you could think, everything was gone," he said.
Monstrous trail
That night, 39 died. The rock first crushed Ashokan's house, the first one on the slope. There were seven members in the family, and some cows. Then it flattened the house of Titus. Inside were Titus, his wife and their two children. The third was Thresia's house. She lived alone. And then it hit the base and skidded to a stop after shooting through Thomas's house with all the trees and rocks and stones and slush it swept along.
It took some hours before the victims could be dug up. Thomas was rushed to the Thiruvananthapuram Medical College, over 60km away, by 4 am the next day. "An entire ward was cleared of patients to accommodate us. By then news had flashed that nearly 40 people had been affected," Thomas said. "All of this I learned later as I was unconscious for three days," he said, seated at his rubber collection centre at the edge of Amboori town.
Rising from the dead
There is a certain order to Thomas's after-trauma life, reflected in the neatly kept house and the uncluttered rubber shop. "Though he keeps saying that he too should have gone that night, Thomas wants to be in control of whatever is left of his life. It is like he will not let it slip again from his hands," said Surendran, a childhood friend.
Thomas re-married a year after the tragedy. "If you don't want to feel isolated, you should have a companion. If you are alone, you cannot survive even a single night. We should find our own ways to keep loneliness away," he said.
Wayanad syndrome
Even then, Thomas looked like a man in mourning, or at least like a man who has not had a good sleep for days. When this observation was put to him, he gave a sad smile. "It is true that I have not slept well these last few days. The television visuals from Wayanad is hard to bear. The sight of JCBs digging up bodies is bringing back memories of what happened to us many years ago. I am finding it difficult to sleep," Thomas said.
Nearly a quarter century ago, it were the JCBs that dug up the bodies of his close ones, and Thomas had constantly, almost compulsively, watched these visuals after he returned from the hospital.
"What is happening in Wayanad has revived old fears in him," Surendran said. "The priest here told him to stop watching television news and to switch to comedy programmes or go to YouTube and watch old Jagathy films," Surendran said. Now, Thomas switches on the TV only to laugh. "I want to sleep soundly," he said.
Haunted house
Thomas sounds eager to move away from his tragedy but still he had done something that will forever anchor him deep in the heart of what happened on the night of November 9, 2001 -- he has built his new house right on top of the ruins of the old one.
"For over a year I stayed away from the place," Thomas said. Disrespect of the dead prompted him to go back.
It is through the road in front of Thomas's landslide-decimated house that Kani tribals reach Amboori market and then return to their settlements across the Neyyar.
"These tribals who pass through the road started blaming the dead for even a slight headache they suffered. They then started to do certain rituals at the spot to ward off evil. This was more than I could bear. My wife, my brother, my children, my nephews and all those who died there are not evil spirits. They are pure souls. The only way I could prove it was by living there," Thomas said.
Behind his house, Kurishumala rises to unknown heights. The brown path the killer rock had once torn through the green has long vanished. The mountain slope now pretends to be just another dense green rubber plantation.
