spilling over with books.

I used to sit on the polished brick floor and get a feeling of being prepared for a good meal. Time used to fly as the different characters in the books fought off demons, or just spend the day like the rest of us children, running about trying to catch dragon flies and making them lift small pebbles, jumping into village ponds for a swim, raiding the neighbour's mango orchard or trying to escape angry watchmen  or snarling dogs.    

Some other attics used to be straight out of horror stories. Since scary movies were relatively few and sequels were unheard of, we used to get our thrills from ghost stories, recounted with great authenticity as far as the facial expressions (upturned eyelids, tongue hanging out) were concerned and appropriate sound effects.

Getting back to the attics, these were usually festooned with cobwebs and dust all over the place. Broken furniture with torn cushions and upturned stools with their legs casting scary looking shadows completed the picture. Of course, even in these places, we were lucky enough to come across old copies of magazines like "Sports & Pastime" or the Reader´s Digest. These treasures had to be retrieved carefully, dusted and taken downstairs for a leisurely read.

Yet other attics were practically inaccessible. These were usually populated by polecats, a mysterious creature that remained out of sight. Its presence was felt mostly in the night with a creaking of the wooden slats, as if someone was ambling across. It always seemed to be ghosts and we had to cover ourselves with the bed sheet and close our eyes tightly to escape all those things that go bump in the night.

Nowadays, of course, much of the traditional houses with their graceful tiled roofs and roomy attics in Kerala have given way to concrete dwellings with no attics and alcoves. Cable TV and video games take up most of the time of the children and the ghosts seem to have vanished.