I used to narrate this story to friends, until someone remarked that it sounded filmy. I regretted for not having capitalised on the excellent material.
That was twenty-five years ago. The story has remained in my mental vault and I am yet to begin writing the screen play. The piece pulled up “my” story from under the pile of memories. I desperately wanted to jump in and say, “Hey! Listen to this!”
And here I am, finally going public with the prized possession. The “cursed” house, I remember, looked no different from the other houses in the village. But my grandmother insisted that every member of the Pattamaniam’s family was plagued by bad luck.
The story opens at my grandparents’ wedding. A hush descends on the crowd as Valambal, our protagonist and the third daughter-in-law of Pattamani Iyer enters the pandal. As men look on with open admiration, the women folk douse their jealousy by loudly expressing their sympathy. What use was beauty, they ask. It was ten years since the marriage and the poor thing was still barren.
The next major scene is at the Pattamani's house where the post man delivers a telegram. A chorus of wails gets the village rushing to the house. Valambal, they are told, had drowned in the Ganges at Varanasi. The young couple, along with the mother-in-law, had left a month earlier, on a pilgrimage to a string of holy places.
Years pass by. In the climax scene, an aged woman in burkha, accompanied by a young man, gets off the train at the desolate station. The woman gives direction to the bullock cart driver and gets it to stop outside the Pattamaniam's house. She gets off the cart, surveys the house and calls out to the son and other family members by name. By the time the old-man emerges at the front door, there is a ring of spectators outside. The woman tells the crowd of the man and his mother's treachery in selling her off to a Pathan.
In the last shot, against the backdrop of blowing wind, the woman in black, picks up a fist full of the Earth and strews it on the door step, muttering a curse on the lot.
