Introduction
The main characters in the story are a construction worker named Mahendra and his cook, Iswaran. Iswaran liked to tell Mahendra stories, so every night he would tell him one. The popular Tamil thrillers he read every day influenced the stories he wrote. Reading these stories gave him ideas. Mahendra was so scared by one of his stories about a ghost woman that he decided to leave the place the next day.
Summary
Mahendra worked for a company as a junior supervisor. The company hired out supervisors to work at factories, bridges, dams, and other construction sites. His job was to watch what was going on at the work site. He had to move from one place to another because of his job. Mahendra lived a simple life as a single man. His needs were less strict, so he could adapt to any situation.
Iswaran was Mahendra’s cook. Mahendra had Iswaran do all of his housework. He would cook for him, wash his clothes, and tell him stories to keep him busy. Iswaran was also able to make vegetables and cooking ingredients that could not be found anywhere else.
Mahendra would take some food with him to work and leave for work early in the morning. Iswaran would clean the shed, wash the clothes, and take a bath while praying after Mahendra went to work. After eating lunch, he would read a popular Tamil thriller before going to sleep. Iswaran was a lot like what he became because of the Tamil thrillers he had read. This influenced how he told stories, which was clear. Even small events were told with suspense and surprise by him. For example, he used dramatic expressions and movements to describe a tree that had fallen over as a “bushy beast” (a wild animal). Mahendra liked to hear Iswaran’s stories, which he would listen to without judging.
Iswaran told Mahendra a story about an elephant that went crazy. He told how one day a crazy elephant got out of the timber yard in his hometown and destroyed everything in his path. It broke the branches and tore up the vines. The elephant eventually got to the town. It got to the main road and broke the stands that sold clothes, mud pots, and fruit. The elephant then went to the school yard and broke everything there. During this event, all of the boys at school locked themselves in their classrooms, and the teachers went up to the terrace. Iswaran, a young boy in school, grabbed a stick from one of his teachers all of a sudden. He ran down to the ground and hit the elephant’s third toenail. The elephant fell over. Iswaran would leave the story unfinished at this point.
After a while, Iswaran finished his story by telling Mahendra that an animal doctor had been called to check on the elephant.
After two days, the elephant’s mahout took him to the jungle. Mahendra asked Iswaran how he was able to control the elephant, and Iswaran said that he had paralysed the elephant’s nervous system with either Ju-Jitsu or Karate.
One day, Iswaran made a delicious dinner for the spirits of the ancestors because it was a good day to do so. Iswaran told Mahendra about the factory where they were staying while he was eating dinner. He told Mahendra that this area of the factory used to be a cemetery. On the path, he had seen skulls and bones, and at night, he had seen ghosts. He also told Mahendra about a scary ghost woman who would wander around at midnight when the moon was full. She would look like a skeleton who was holding a baby.
Mahendra was very scared by Iswaran’s ghost story. He thought the story was clever and went to sleep right away. But Mahendra was deeply affected by the story. From then on, every night Mahendra would look out the window to make sure there was nothing moving outside. Mahendra used to look out at the landscape on nights when there was a full moon, but now he tried not to. Mahendra woke up one night when he heard a low sound near his window. He didn’t look out at first, but when the sound got louder, he did. He saw a dark, cloudy person with a bundle in their hands. Mahendra was scared when he saw it. He thought about it later and thought it might have been a trick of his mind.
Mahendra was ready to go to work the next morning. He had forgotten everything about it. But Iswaran brought up the ghost again. He told Mahendra that he had come to see him because he had heard the noise coming from Mahendra’s room. Mahendra was shocked to hear this. The next day, he decided to leave and turned in his papers.
