Durga Ashtami is not just another day for true Malayalis

Today is Durga Ashtami.

Today is the day Nagavalli will take her most violent form and try to kill the man who slaughtered her.

Dr Sunny Joseph

Renowned psychiatrist Dr Sunny Joseph -- psychiatrist Bratley's junior in an American university and someone who's described by a tantric expert and family priest as a 10-headed Raavan for he has two world famous essays in modern psychiatry to his credit -- receives an SOS from his best friend Nakulan from Kerala.

What awaits Dr Sunny in Kerala is a mansion - Madampalli -- which people believe is haunted, some dysfunctional family members of his best friend, his well-educated Ganga, and Sreedevi, Nakulan's cousin who he believes is mentally deranged.

An unwelcome guest for everyone else in the family since they know he was called to "treat" Sreedevi, Sunny takes up the task of finding the reason behind the many supernatural occurrences at Madampalli.

From his interactions with everyone in the family, Sunny realises that the psychic who tries to kill Nukaln's cousin Alli, the one who sets Ganga's sari on fire, is not Sreedevi but Nakulan's wife Ganga.

As he confesses the truth to his best friend, Sunny says he realised that Sreedevi is perfectly normal the day he reached but that he couldn't find the real patient.

Sunny then narrates how he sensed strong psychic vibrations from Ganga, how he found out the reason behind it, and how he diagnosed her with split-personality or multiple-personality disorder or what is called as Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Ganga

Ganga, who had a troubled childhood, courtesy her parents who chose to leave her behind with her grandmother, grew up listening to folk tales.

Her first encounter with a psychic disorder happened when she was in Class X after knowing about her parents' plan to take her with them to Calcutta.

What could control her was the voodoo colour-carpet her grandmother readied. Her modern, educated parents took her to Calcutta, took medical help and she got back to normalcy, forgetting all that happened. What stayed within her was a possibility of another psychic disorder.

As Ganga reached the Madampalli mansion, she gets heavily influenced by the overdose of superstitions and folk tales about a particular character - Nagavalli.

Nagavalli

Nagavalli was a classical dancer brought to the mansion from Tanjore by then ruler and a strong patriarchal figure Shankaran Thampi, 150 years ago. Thampi was not aware that Nagavalli was in love with a dancer -- Ramanathan -- who comes down to Kerala to rescue his love.

The legend Ganga hears from Nakulan's aunt has it that Thampi, who learns about Nagavalli's affair, chops her into pieces inside her bedroom in Madampalli called the Thekkini, and that on the eighth day, on Durga Ashtami, Nagavalli's blood-thirsty ghost went till Thampi's room to take revenge but was controlled by him using magic spells. Nagavalli's spirit was, ever since, said to have locked inside Thekkini.

The sympathy Ganga develops for the ill-treated, oppressed, brutally murdered Nagavalli soon turns into empathy and then to a strong feeling that she, herself, is Nagavalli. This feeling grows leaps and bounds as the multiple-personality disorder gets triggered.

Durga Ashtami

It is on the night before Durga Ashtami that Dr Sunny explains everything to Nakulan and asks him to deny permission to Ganga who was planning to go for his cousin's wedding shopping the next day. Ganga, who reacts to the denial as Nagavalli, realises there's something wrong with her and faints.

She wakes up as Nagavalli.

Manichithrathazhu

At the risk of stereotyping Keralites, it won't be wrong to say that every "true" Malayali would have watched the cult-classic movie Manichithrathazhu multiple times. It is an inside joke that those who have not seen the movie are not Malayali enough.

The nail-biting climax of the movie on Durga Ashtami is not something Malayalis can forget.

Directed by veteran Fazil and starring superstars Mohanlal (Dr Sunny), Suresh Gopi (Nakulan) and Shobhana (Ganga/Nagavalli) in the lead, Manichithathazhu is considered one of the best psycho-thrillers ever made in India. The movie collected Rs 5 crore in the year 1993, becoming the highest grossing movie in Malayalam and ran for over a year in three threatres in Kerala.

In an online poll conducted by IBN Live in 2013, Manichithrathazhu was voted as India's second greated film of all time. On movie reviewing website IMDB, Manichithrathazhu has got an 8.8 out of 10.

Shobhana's stellar performance in the movie got her the National Award for Best Actress and the movie got the National Award for the Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment.

The movie was remade into almost all the south Indian languages years later, in Bengali and even in Bollywood as Akshay Kumar-starrer Bhool Bhulaiyaa.