Meet Bala

I met Bala in 2001 in Fort Cochin. He was my rickshaw driver.  Bala comes from a poor Brahmin family. His father is a reformed drunk turned milkman, his mother a house wife and he has a younger brother.

Now, 9 years later, all his family members, plus a sister-in-law and a small child, live in my home in Varkala. He relocated them in my house. He broke the door of my house while is was out of town one day and installed them there. He uses them as a human shield against me.

In 2002 he invited me to stay in his home, and I lived for 3 months in a small room in his house. Here i am standing in front of his house in Mattancherry, wearing my first saree.

I became a sensation in the neighborhood. People came to ask the family what I ate, did I shower?, how did they communicate with me?

We got along well and started a romantic relation. I enjoyed the exotic, adapted well and was thrilled by the experience. I could have been more perceptive, or suspicious about some signs of  strange, aggressive behavior between Bala and his family. But i saw only what i liked to see. Bala told me that as a teenager he had vowed  that he would do anything to get out of poverty and improve his life. I took that as a positive sign of good character. I had no idea that what he meant was that he had planned for me to pay for his success.

We traveled to Varkala, where I showed him the dream place that I found in 2001. He liked it immediately and offered to help me with the complications of buying properties in India. We agreed that I would send the money and he would buy the property for me. The 99 years lease was going to be my guarantee.

I should have asked second, third, more opinions. But it was hard to find someone that could speak English enough to answer my questions. And Bala was very prompt, always sending emails with details and status. I had no idea that he was a pathological liar. I did not see that he was following a path with determination, cool mind and remarkable discipline.

Bala planned to start a tourist resort in my property  but I had no real interest in having a business. I had just found the place of my dreams, I wanted to enjoy it. Yet I did not object to his idea after all he needed to make a living on his own.

Through the years I helped Bala creating the success of Asthamay Bungalows. I decorated tables, walls, rooms, designed furnitures, planted flowers, taught the cook Italian food, entertained guests and created an atmospheric of relaxed comfort and peace.

By the end of 2009 I had changed my mind about this paradise. Bala had turned it into a painful place to be  for me and i knew that his intention was to throw me out with any means possible, including violence.