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on March-2006

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NOVEL EXCERPTS 
     

3.    Devil’s Fort

“ The situation is extremely pathetic.”

“Why? What happened? What’s wrong?”

“See the big old mansion? There is no light inside!” Passers-by said pointing to the old house. Voices on the village road followed a flashlight and faded away.  In the darkness, the trees outside the house resembled armed soldiers taking position. The house, surrounded by weeds and bushes, had a quadrangular inner courtyard with four independent buildings and a gatehouse at the entrance, which made the place look like a haunted castle. Most of the houses at Nellikkara had electricity by now, but the mansion stood in pitch darkness.

A shadowy figure appeared at the front of the house with a lighted nilavilakku (bronze lamp). With piety and respect the woman placed the traditional lamp in the center of the sit-out, a Hindu custom long considered auspicious. A cold wind brushed past the small flame, causing it to stutter for a second and then hold. The air was one of total calm except for her occasional footfalls.

“They were the uncrowned rulers of the village in the past.  No more. Nothing remains now, except the ruins of an old mansion,” someone muttered again from the dark road.

“Sreemangalam Mana’s current downfall is the result of curses of the innocents alone,” said another voice.

“Do you hear the comments of the passers-by?” a male asked the woman from the room’s half-wall, moving his poonool (sacred thread worn by Brahmins across their shoulders) between his fingers.

“Yes, I do. But how can we object to people expressing their views?” she said in a weak, despairing voice as she cleaned a small bronze lamp. “Many villagers enjoy the Mana’s fall. How can we blame them? We must be paying for our ancestors’ crime. We will be fortunate if we free ourselves from this burden in a single lifetime. How is it possible?” She stared at the premises and found only darkness.

In the middle of the inner courtyard stood a thulassithara (platform with basil plant) containing the ancestors’ remains. Lighting the small lamp in her hand, the woman moved a step forward before turning towards the stone lamp on the thulassithara.

“Deepam…deepam…,” she uttered as she moved. The male sitting on the outer half-wall saluted the lamp with open palms and then placed them over his eyes, invoking light.

Pouring few drops of oil into the stone lamp she lit it. With half-closed eyes and folded hands, she prayed for the dead. The basil plants on the platform moved in the mild breeze as if the souls of the dead heard her silent cry. Sitting cross-legged in the sit-out in the flickering light, she conducted her evening prayers. The young man continued his aimless gaze towards the road lit by the village council’s dim lights.

“Their ancestors gained wealth and special privileges from the monarch who ruled the area. As high caste Hindus, Sreemangalam Brahmins enjoyed enormous supremacy. They oppressed the poor tenants and low-caste farm workers.” The words penetrated her psyche like incurable wounds. The tales of endless cruelty committed by her father and ancestors haunted her loneliness. Fear vexed her thoughts as she looked for a ray of light in the horizon, but the sky was without a single star.

“Break that dog’s bones; let his punishment be a lesson for all those wretched who misbehave,” she heard her father’s snarl echoing through the dark corridors of the Mana from the remoteness of time. The sounds of whipping, mixed with boisterous laughter and the victims’ screams, reverberated incessantly. The wind carried the wails of widows, children, and the elderly parents of victims.

The ruins of Sreemangalam Mana remained a monument of ill fate. The days of glory had vanished. In the night, the souls of the dead roamed the premises and reptiles always moved about fearlessly. Light entered hesitantly even in the daytime and wild plants grew without fertilizers. The giant structure of the house, the boundary wall, and the gatehouse had all lost shape, destroyed either by termites or for lack of maintenance.

Subhadra, the eldest daughter of the family, had eloped with Bhaskaran, an untouchable boy. His family had been Sreemangalam slaves. He paid dearly for his misadventure.  They traced him out, brought him to the Mana and was tortured no end by her father, Ramabhadran Nambutiri.

At the peak of his brutalities, the Naxalites killed Ramabhadran Nambutiri. In the name of land reform, the communist government confiscated much of their farmlands and paddy fields. The days of pomp ended and scarcity replaced abundance.

“Ahalya…”

Her mother’s grief-stricken voice called out from the Mana’s dark interior. Ahalya could fathom the untold billows of agony concealed in that feeble voice. She heard rats squeaking underneath the roof. Their hasty movements disrupted the calm for a short while, then total silence returned.  

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The Internet Screenwriters Network Screen Site Dramatica ..... Film, Television and Video Reviews and information Screenwriting ..... Lots of good information for the screenwriter from Visual Writer Resources for Screenwriters ..... Hundreds of links for screenwriting How Things Work How Stuff Works ..... Interesting web pages about how things work How to do things ..... From How to Feed Your Pigs to How to Make a Puppet -- More than 15,000 How-to Solutions at eHow.Com Strange and Unusual Trivia ..... Celebrity Trivia, Superstitions, Unusual Facts and more by Brian Candy Folklore and Mythology ..... From D. L. Ashliman, University of Pittsburgh Cliche Finder ..... Type in a word and find every cliche with that word in it Movie Cliches ..... From the Movie Cliche List --- Really funny Useless Information ..... Tons of useless information from Cool Quiz Museum of Hoaxes ..... First Human Clone Born Hoax plus many more frauds, hocus-pocus, humbug, imposture, rumor, sleight, wile and so on. Science Made Stupid ..... Written and Illustrated by TOM WELLER Encyclopedia of Monsters ..... Monsters, Mythical Creatures and Fabulous Beasts by Gareth Long I Can Eat Grass ..... How to say "I can eat glass, it doesn't hurt me" in 110 languages. Why? Only Ethan Mollick, Harvard class of 1997, knows for sure Hieroglyphics ..... Type in your name and see it in hieroglyphics Computer terminology in Chinese ..... With text and voice in Chinese ..... Humor Urban Legends ..... Lots of interesting, funny and useless information News of the Weird ..... Weird but true --- News from all over A Dictionary of Useful Research Phrases .....What do Research Phrases really mean