THE DARKENED LIGHTS

A BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY

It was December 2014, every one of us was busy packing our bags to travel to our respective hometowns after completing a hectic and the most difficult schedule of 5Th semester engineering exams. Amidst packing their bags, everybody in the hostel were discussing about their fate in the recently concluded Digital Signal processing(DSP) paper. Though me , Praveen and Prem were from CSE , we had an occasional electronics papers. One of those papers was DSP. To be very frank, we did not worry about DSP Since it's been a known fact that we would hardly get twenty marks. Might be twenty one marks but definitely nor more than that. In the midst of those noisy DSP discussions, we had an other discussion. We were planning to spend the vacation together. There were some six odd plans initiated but eventually rejected by Praveen who used to be highly sceptical and convincing him would be a bigger task than getting passed in the DSP. You should not do so much of arguments with him Because he knew boxing.

Finally, Prem came up with an excellent idea of taking us to his village. Since me and Praveen was not from rural areas, we wanted to explore it. We booked tickets in bus since train facility was not available to Theni. We boarded at 9.30 pm in Koyambedu, Chennai. We spoke some cricket, some politics and a pinch of cinema. We reached Theni by 6.00 am and from there we had to get bus to reach Prem's village. Trust me, we had not seen that much greenery in our lives which we saw while travelling for a brief 15 minutes in that bus. We got down in a place where I could see a naming plate stating "Surulipatti" would be in 2 kilometres distance. I politely asked Prem " Do we really need to walk 2 kilometres" . He replied " I am afraid, we should". We started to walk and I started thinking about Prem.

Prem was a kind of guy who chose to live simpler despite having so much of wealth and assets. Prem's father Muthuvel was a chairman in that village who was highly respected by the people living there.

While walking, we saw a strange building with faded paints and broken walls. It was really haunting. As I said Praveen was different, He started questioning Prem about that building. Prem said " It has been like this since I was born. It has been told that a girl was brutally raped and murdered in that place and her soul is still wandering around that building. The man Ramasamy who raped her was found dead there. Since then, nobody was dare enough to visit there. So guys no experiments please!!! Especially for you Praveen ".

Praveen said " We won't go there buddy".

I did not know the honesty level of Praveen's statement but for me, I could rather watch Conjuring movie alone than going to this building.

We finally reached Prem's house. It was not a house but a palace. It would take literally half a day to see everything in that house.Then there was a man who was approaching towards us with a white shirt and a white dhoti. He was dark, six feet tall and had an unprecedented manly appeal.I had no wonder why people respect him so much and yes, he is Muthuvel, the most respected chairman of Surulipatti, For me, It was respect at first sight.

Prem introduced us to his father. He used to call his father as " Ayya" and it sounded nice.

A group of people was waiting for Muthuvel. He asked everyone " did you eat?". Everyone unanimously said yes.

Two men were standing aside when everyone were sitting. I guessed those two would be the topic of the upcoming debate.

One man in the group said " Ayya!! as we all know, our village is known for its strict discipline .we have been awarded and appreciated by our state government for being an alcohol free village.Recently, Some adverse things are happening which is a disgrace for us. Yes, two of our men were found drunk yesterday and caused nuisance in the village. If it leaks to our neighbour village, Our name will be spoilt. More than that, it is really bad to see your efforts of changing this village into a better one is going in vain.