Civilization's Child

The story of Marie Ward, a religious woman from a devout, aristocratic Yorkshire Catholic family who lived between 1585 and 1645 and moved to St. Omer in Walloon France, where she joined the Order of St. Clare, later returning to England to found her own order and devote her life to helping others.

The uncle of the young narrator enters his house unexpectedly. In order to offer him some refreshments, he goes to bring a bottle of wine. Through the crevice of the wall which happens to be there, he sees an ethereal girl offering a lotus flower to an old man who bursts into a hair-raising laughter. Surprisingly, this is exactly the picture he keeps drawing on pen cases as a calling. He is then jolted into realities. The thought of the old man gradually begins to loom over his life and sow the seed of anxiety. The narrator embarks on a journey in search of the ethereal girl and the old man. His journey, however, takes him into a study of history and myths. The narrator comes back and realizes that his uncle has left, leaving the door agape like the mouth of a dead man. Desperately he goes out to look for the ethereal girl. But upon returning he finds the girl sitting on the front stairs. The girl enters the house as if she knows the way and lies in bed. But she is dead. In the morning the narrator cuts the body into pieces and puts them in a trunk. Then an odds-and-ends man appears out if the blue to help him with burial. While digging the ground they find an ancient pottery which the old man takes as his wages. The pottery bears the same picture he keeps painting on his pen-cases. In the second section, the narrator finds himself bedridden in a room with two small windows to the outside world. Through the small window he can see a butcher and an odds-and-ends man. He recalls his past; his mother leaves him and goes to India and entrusts him to the care of a nanny. Later the narrator marries his cousin who does not love him and instead sleeps with the rabbles. He gradually wastes away and approaches death even more. The only communication in his small world is his nanny who evokes his feeling of hatred for old beliefs and superstitions. Feeling the sharp fangs of death on his neck, he decides to the take his wife with him. So he disguises himself as the odds-and-ends man and kills her. And he becomes the odds-and-ends man himself. In fact, the narrator becomes one of the rabbles whom he holds in great abhorrence.

An industry that has sustained a town for over 100 years is closing it's doors. A family that has been the cornerstone of the community, has given up. The only thing that can save the dying little town - IS AN UNSPEAKABLE TRAGEDY.

Gautham is an orphan raised by an Army major in Vizag. Swapna is a college student from Hyderabad who loses the diary that Gautham finds. How he manages to impress her forms the rest of the tale.

Franz is deeply in love with Julie. Celine doesn't know what she wants. Maybe Franz.

An African dictator (Wole Soyinka) seeks advice from the king (Rashidi Onikoyi) he ousted on modernizing his tribal nation.