Carnival Night

 

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Chapter 1 : Intro 

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It's a village in the Eastern part of India. People say, at midnight, at times they have seen a carnival held in their village. The place is told as "Mela Ground" by the people.No one goes there. The ground surrounded by an ancient boundary and with trees around the boundary. That place always looks cool like clean and clear ground.

When it's getting dark, no people go for the ground. As it is a myth that if you go there, you will disappear the next day. What happens? no one knows...

Some people say it's the carnival of the undead. People who have unsatisfied death or had some unfulfilled urges before death, celebrate their desire here, in this carnival. 

Some people report missing of their domestic animals by every carnival night which believed to be held on every Monday. 

Ahh... Was it a rumor?  Really? 

Maybe... 

A team of ours started our journey towards the eastern part of India, that's Odisha. We reached that village at nearly 6"o" clock evening. The specialties of the Odia villages are, every village has a temple, at the starting of the village. That temple is well known as "Village Temple".People here believe that,

the God/Goddess of the village temple, protect the village from all the evils along with the diseases or pandemics.Nowadays in 2021, people have believed that it's the temple that had stopped the "Corona Pandemic" to reach their village. 

After two days there was a special occasion in that place, that is "Agni Utsav/ Festival of fires" , in which people gather around in a place and set fire to the straws and put vegetables inside the fire. After the fire is completely burnt, they collect their burnt vegetables(mostly brinjals) and have those as they believe that the burnt brinjal get them rid of a lot of diseases. And that fire sets all the evil far from the village.

it wouldn't get a better opportunity than this to make people believe that the carnival they are talking about is a myth, nothing else.

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Chapter 2  (The Village Temple)

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In the evening we had a normal conversation or we can say it as a meeting with the seniors of the village at the village temple. People in the evening offer prayer at the village temple and after that in the temple courtyard, they have a gathering for some minutes every day. So during that, I asked them, that it might be a myth. Have you ever tried to figure this out?

One of them firmly said , if we have to believe in God then why not in evil? If God exists why not evil?

He had a point but I had one more doubt!

I :

Ok, how you are so sure that the god/goddess in your village temple protects you from all evils?

It may be your misconceptions!

people :

As per you, it may be. But we people at times, at midnight, have seen a woman with a stick in her hand has a walked throughout village street from the starting point of our village till the endpoint of our village. She keeps on visiting or guarding or protecting the village the whole night.

I:

Oops, she/he might be a thief ...why don't you try and stopped her.

People:

Not at all. We can sleep peacefully due to her blessings. The thief never guards a village at midnight. And she repeatedly does this. Some of us had seen her eyes which look like a fire in the jungle, and the bindi in her head, a deep red color. I agree we dint see her face in the dark, and we don't have that much fortune, but we imagine this kind of image of her in our mind.

From ancient or decades, villages have village temple. Specifically ours, we never find a serious rubbery, a village fire destruction, mass death in disaster or pandemic. 

I:

Don't you think, your god/goddess would save you from the evil carnivals?

People :

We never complain about carnivals because we never ever got harm due to that. Our village temple is not let the carnival affect our people. We believe as our God/Goddess wonders in our village whole night protecting us, the evils can't come inside our village and even they are captured inside the "Mela Ground".

From the ancient talk, we remember, the story, once a big carnival was going on in the Mela ground. But suddenly due to some reason, one of the shops caught fire. At those times the shops were made up of mud (cottage ) and the roof of the cottage was usually made up of straws. As staws were prone to catch fire instantly and there were lots of shops were there side by side, all of them caught into the fire. The whole ground turned into scary devastation. Due to the strong walls and a one-way exit, some of the people got out, and the remaining were burnt alive in that fire.

From that day people of the village heard the scary shout of the people often from the "Mela ground" at night.

After a few days, the village priest did some rituals in the ground and now we rarely heard that sound . Every year we celebrate our "Agni Utsav"(festival of fire) on that ground to make that place free from evils if any.

Some of us saw lights, shops, and people in "Mela Ground" at times in mid-night. But we can never say they crossed the ground border and did any harm to our people ever.

Tomorrow is Monday and we believe that it is the time of the carnival. So you people can research on this. If you want.

I:

Yeah. That's why we are here. Let's see it tomorrow.

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Chapter 3 : Carnival Night

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to be continued...