KARIKALAN AND THE TIME MACHINE

                                       KARIKALAN AND THE TIMEMACHINE

“Sir,” said Manikkam, “If you keep quiet and be patient for some time, I will tell everything you want to know! If you won’t take it out at me, I would like to point out at the outset that the original plan was not to come to King Karikalan’s Chola Kingdom. What’s more, sir, I was not the reason for this mishap. I set the Time Machine to go to my grandfather's place some nine hundred and odd years back. But you put a spanner in the works and as a result, we have landed here in King Karikala’s Chola Kingdom!”

“What!”

“Sir, I have already prayed for an uninterrupted time till I have explained the deviation in my original plan,” requested Manikkam. Sir, everything must come around soon according to our plan. After all, I am the maker of the Time Machine. But something that is out of our control happens on which I cannot, at the moment, put my finger. But of course, I cannot blame you entirely.” Manikkam’s eyes reflected the pain he was having in his mind. So the Super Star kept his studious quiet. But he had an inner feeling that something is going to be spoken about and he was going to enter a dark place with prodding feet.

“First we should be very frank about your mental state before you came to my flat, sir,” Manikkam continued, “you were certainly going through a patch. You had a problem in your mind about some important matter. You wanted to light a small lamp and your wife was dead set against it. If some of these problems happened to a villager, they would say it was because of someone playing the black magic against him. Even in the cities, persons like your mental problems would be referred to a psychiatrist. But you were accurate about your conviction, even though nothing concrete had been revealed to you. You just felt with a yearning that if a small lamp was lighted in the Pooja room of your house and daily worship of the lighted lamp was carried out, everything would pan out fine in your personal as well as social and professional life!”

The Super Star got a new understanding. As Manikkam continued to speak, many things he had forgotten since they had come to the Chola Kingdom now kept coming up to the surface. “From you speech, Manikkam, am I to understand that on that evening when you kept begging me to come to your flat and spend the night as your guest, you had already known about my personal problem?”

“Please, sir,” Manikkam begged, “don’t come to any conclusion before you understand the matter fully. Don’t think you were after all wishing to light a little lamp. There is more to it than meets the eye. You are an extraordinary man and you had been after something very ineffably extraordinary! So…”

“Manikkam, so I am an extraordinary giniya pig. An ideal subject for your version of the Black Magic? So you thought you would take me first to your grandfather’s time and place…by the way, where’s that old bastard?”

“Don’t shout, sir!” Manikkam urged the Super Star. There was some insistence in Manikkam’s tone of voice. “Hey! What did you do to your grandfather? Before the question was out, Super Star could understand something unnerving: “So, your grandfather’s words to that boy to bring gruel to us had come out of him before he could think of the consequences, ok?” The Super Star was in an agitated mood.

“Yes, sir,” Manikkam said, “Before he could think of the consequences he had blurted out to bring us that damned gruel!”

“So, for that, you have done away with the grandfather?

Manikkam’s heart warmed to the concern shown by the Super Star about his grandfather. “Sir, you like my grandfather very much?”

“Sir that grandfather is not my grandfather!”

“What!”

“Indeed sir, the grandfather and I are one and the same person, sir. Some nine hundred and odd years before our Chennai time, I had been born in Kanji and in my youth, I had become the bodyguard of the King of Kanji, by name, Mamallan! So the grandfather is none other than me!

“Ah, I’ll be damned!” the Super Star blurted out. “What are you talking about, Manikkam? How could it…?”

“Please pay me heed, sir!” Manikkam strained to capture the shocked man’s full attention. “We have not come here to Karikalan’s Chola Kingdom with our bodies, Ok? So if you think you are in a frightful condition or even waired situation, since your body is in Chennai, nothing untoward would happen to your body, mind or to your dear life, Ok? Then here I speak about another important thing: even if you think you are up against something waired and frightful, nothing is going to happen to you here, because here you are simply a pure spirit! Moreover, anything happening here is not going to affect your body in Chennai, Ok?”

{Dear Readers, apart from this blog, I’m writing four more blogs. They are as follows:

myresourcefulaunt.blogspot.com

kaviriyinselvan.blogspot.com

raguramkrishnabagavatgita.blogspot.com

raguramramayanaforchildren.blogspot.com

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