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The Yakshi of Kerala, the Spirit of a Wronged Woman

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  ( Statue of Yakshi by renowned sculptor Kanayi Kunjiraman, Malampuzha Dam, Kerala; image source: Ranjithsiji, Wikipedia) Kerala's White-Sari-clad Vampire  Her story is terror-evoking and awe-inspiring. She is culturally tethered to the gender politics of the society in which she exists as a myth and lore. The girls in a small region in south India (the Malayalam-speaking population) grew up listening to the terrifying Yakshi stories and assimilated from them, an odd feeling of empowerment. The Yakshis in these stories are the spirits of women wronged and killed by men. A Yakshi kills men and completes her revenge, not only on the individual who wronged her but the whole bunch of ‘mankind’. Her feet do not touch the earth when she walks. This is how you can know her for what she is. She will wait for her victims in twilight, dawns and dusks, on the edges of dark nights. She has long black hair that almost reaches her feet. Her lips are full and crimson, her eyelashes thick an...
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Paraman, The Street Violinist: Memory of a Man

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  (The folk violin of Pulluvas; image source:  Kannanshanmugam,shanmugamstudio, Kollam , Wikipedia) The Village Visitors  Those were times when things were less complex than they now are. We lived in a bucolic countryside where everyone knew everyone else. The only outsiders who frequented the place were visiting relatives, a bunch of regularly appearing street vendors, the postman, the Gurkha (a man from Nepal who would be paid Rs 10 per month by each family for keeping vigil in the village during nights*), and our very own exclusive beggars. We knew them as they made rounds on almost expected dates and times. Paraman’s Song Paraman, the street violinist, had positioned himself between an artist and a beggar. In our culture, the members of the Pulluva community, who made exquisite music using two delightful musical instruments- a single-string local fiddle and a round mud pot with a tight wire wound across it- were the official local musicians. They would come to sing in...
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Travel Plan: A Trip to Understand The Bermuda Triangle

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  (Image source: grammidistoria.wordpress.com Hi Traveler,  You are a fan of mystery, the inexplicable, and you would love to go probing the geographies, home to such mysteries. For someone like you, the Bermuda Triangle is now not an intangible puzzle. You can visit this region of the sea by entering it from three land masses, which form the three endpoints to the triangle.  The Bermuda Triangle: Basic History and Facts An imaginary triangle drawn connecting Florida, the Bermuda Islands, and Puerto Rico in the North Atlantic Ocean will give you the Bermuda Triangle. The area of this sea stretch is around 1.3 to 3.9 million square kilometres. The exact boundaries of the triangle are not demarcated. Different people at different times set vague definitions of the area under the triangle.    In December 1945, five Navy training aeroplanes navigating the sky above the Bermuda Triangle in the Atlantic Ocean, with 14 men on board, disappeared. A rescue mission was la...
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