The Lady Biker

By Thampy Antony Thekkek

Worldly, humorous, mysterious, and funny. These fourteen stories by the award-winning author Thampy Antony Thekkek gently stroke the surface of Indian and American life.

-Sweet Pain
-During that Journey
-Mysterious Somebody
-Curry Leaf
-Jo Ramona
-Dr. Alliankan Speaking
-The Chief Editor's Story
-Paulo Coelho and Kochu Paulo
-The Lady Biker
-Guava Mango
-The State
-The Damsel
-The Winter Leaf
-The Forbidden Fruit

Being an Indian American author, poet, actor, and film producer, he writes about Kerala life from a metro, and about metro life from a metro. That is the peculiar beauty of this book. And the stories can be read with ease. Brilliant, original, and entirely absorbing work of fiction.

Winner of Basheer Amma Malayalam Award 2019 and Kerala Ezhuthukoottam Pravasi Award 2019!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781796086249

Book preview

Copyright © 2020 by Thampy Antony Thekkek.

ISBN:   Softcover         978-1-7960-8609-6

             eBook               978-1-7960-8624-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 01/31/2020

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

808594

Contents

My Writing Journey

Sweet Pain

During That Journey

Mysterious Somebody

Curry Leaf

Jo Ramona

Dr. Alliankan Speaking

The Chief Editor’s Story

Paulo Coelho and Kochu Paulo

The Lady Biker

Guava Mango

The State

The Damsel

The Winter Leaf

The Forbidden Fruit

Thampy Antony Thekkek

My Writing Journey

I WAS born in Ponkunnam, Kerala, as the third son of Mariamma and Antony Thekkekuttu, and I am proud of my village roots. My education was at Ponkunnam Government High School, St. Xavier’s College, Trivandrum, and Mar Athanasius College of Engineering, Kothamangalam. My official life began in Malappuram as a civil engineer in the government service. Later, in the United States, I took an associate degree in architecture. Now I live in the United States with my wife Prema and children.

I have no answer why I have taken up acting and writing when I could have lived comfortably as an engineer, and later as a businessman in the United States. Such an image did not matter in the family or in the village. My younger brother Babu Antony and elder brother Joseph Antony, who was an athlete and volleyball player, had made a name for themselves. My father used to collect and preserve the newspaper clippings about them. The first experience of sweetness will be the sweetest, as the theory of diminishing returns goes.

Our eldest sibling, Leela, was a good reader at school and in her husband’s house in Bombay. My life with her in Bombay during the holidays might have lured me into books. I was a regular visitor at Ponkunnam Public Library, which even my parents might not have noticed. Ponkunnam Varkey and Ponkunnam Damodaran, the famous writers from our village, had already influenced me. The first celebrity Ponkunnam Varkey’s story, Sabthikunna Kalappa (The Speaking Plow) was my favorite story. But my dearest writers were Basheer and VKN, and their wit influenced me in more ways than one. Yet my life as an artist happened just by accident, and I do not take it as a big deal.

I reached the United States in the eighties and became active on stage for the theatrical group Manga run by the local Malayali association. I wrote comedy plays for the theater, and they were published by Olive Books. Later, DC Books published a collection of my poems. My debut into filmdom happened through Jayaraj, the director, and the hero in the movie was Babu Antony, my brother. But the burden of life and responsibilities drove me away from the film field for some time.

Rajiv Anchal offered me a chance to act in his telefilm when he visited the United States. The spirituality in my eyes impressed him. Then I acted in a Hollywood movie, Beyond the Soul, in which I acted as a professor with a philosophical nature. I was chosen as the best actor in the Honolulu Film Festival for my performance in the film. It was an unexpected flash of good luck, I guess.

All awards happen out of sheer luck, determined by the mood of the jury. I was the first Indian to be honored so. The media began to notice me thereafter. I could act important roles in many Malayalam films later. The roles I played in the Malayalam and English movies yet to be released will hopefully be noticed.

But now I am fully into writing. I began with poems and articles, later short stories and now a novel too. I am in good ties with my characters and it makes my life euphoric, and that is my impetus to write more.

On looking back, I was a late bloomer. If you eat slowly, you could eat anything. Do everything very slowly and patiently, and you will spare yourself from many a hazard, let it be walking or driving. Answer the questions also very slowly, taking your time, allowing space for a thought process. That is the policy I keep: better late than never.

I gratefully remember Mathrubhumi, Manorama, Madhyamam, Kalakaumudi, Malayalam Vaarkia, Ezhuthu Magazine, and Gokulam Sree magazine for publishing these stories in their publications.

There are many writers in Kerala who have profoundly influenced me. I remember them all and my readers with all my humility, and commit this book to you all.

Antony P. Thekkek

California, USA

Sweet Pain

I T WAS the famous Dr. Chaturvedi, not God, who said that Suresh Panicker’s days were numbered. He told this to his wife Anita Panicker, who expected it but did not know that the death was coming so soon. Death is like that; it will barge in at the most inappropriate moment, like a clown oblivious of any discretion on stage. He was under treatment at the prestigious Stanford Medical College in California.

Dr. Chaturvedi was probably assigned the task of passing the sad message as he was Panicker’s family friend. Dr. Chaturvedi’s wife Pallavi used to visit Suresh Panicker at the sickbed. Anita knew that her husband loved that pristine Punjabi beauty. And she did not object to it as his days were numbered. But she did not tell anybody about that secret affair. Anita had no idea how to react when the sad message was passed to her. Panicker never dreaded death. He refused to change his lifestyle even when lung cancer was confirmed.

Once, when she objected to it, he said, with laughter, You fool, this is the third stage, and a changed life will not make much of a difference. Let us fall in love again before I die.

Then he sang the lines of the great Malayalam poet Changampuzha Krishna Pillai:

I will slurp to the last dreg

From the glass