The lore of Kaantimaai

Nothing good ever came in the big black trucks, ever. Sometimes it was dead bodies of healthy young men who had left in search of work to feed their families, send their daughters to good boarding schools and buy their wives some jewellery. Other times it was a group of mean army men armed to the teeth who bullied their way around the town in search for some person or other who seemed to always know that they were not hiding in the town but wanted to trouble them for no good reason. And twice it had been expeditions of foreign companies, once it was Chinese and once it had been Italian who were exploring the town for some natural resource that would suddenly make everyone rich, something they said was so much more valuable than gold, the country would become a rich developed country if they found it, they said.

The townsfolk knew it didn't matter either way. First of all, anything of value natural or manmade had either been looted a long time ago or had walked itself out on two feet never to return in search for better opportunities. And second, even if they did find their mythical substance they were under no illusions on the allocation of the benefits...the foreigners would take away most of it, the greedy corrupt central government would take almost everything that was left, and the leftover scraps would be divided by the provincial and local governments. What would be left for the people of the town would be sticks and mud. And that they already had plenty of, they didn't want any more of it.

They were scientists they claimed, doing experiment in the area because they saw something special in their instruments they hadn't seen anywhere. Something about magnets and electricity and lights they said. Evenings and nights should be dark in the village like everywhere around, apparently, the sky shouldn't brighten up suddenly and fade away. No, the villagers tried explaining, it was the stars and the sun and the moon and the planets, it was always like that. The brightness at nights that appeared not too often but often enough for an adult to have observed on several occasions weren't anything special they said, it was just thunder and lighting happening far away across the hills where it was raining even though the skies at the villages were clear. But no the scientists said clear sky turning blue and purple and yellow at nights wasn't normal anywhere else, lightning didn't work like that, there was something special about the village.

And so began the lore of Kaantimaai. Two large temples, constructed in the style of Kathmandu temples from the 15th century, a cable-car from the big city, multiple big hotels, even malls, they could come. Kaantimaai, the story went, the lady of the light, came down upon the village to visit her devotees once every few years to fulfill their wishes and desires. And when she came in, the Earth trembled, the sky hung its head in respect. So great was her affect, so bright was her presence, they said, it could turn the darkest of nights bright as a day, throughout. She had the power of a hundred million lightning strikes, such was the glory of the great goddess. It wasn't just some old superstitious, a group of foreign scientists and come by and validated the lore, they said.