Being a recent admirer and not having read much of his works, I came upon this work by Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, thinking perhaps he had chosen a different approach for this book of his. As it went on, I realized that this is the screenplay adaptation for the movie based on the original book, 'Neela Velicham.' But little did that discovery steal away the fun and good time I had reading his exquisite work! Although the book is in the horror-thriller genre, the scares and spooky incidents may not imbibe the intended fear in today's readers as our concept of horror has drastically changed over time. Yet it is a reminder of the great works that had entertained readers for years, and his writing still keeps an exciting tone to the dialogue delivery and character building. The characters like Cheriya Pareekanni and Kuthiravattam Pappu are hard to find nowadays and unique in their statuses.
Bhargaveenilayam, the abandoned mansion that our novelist or protagonist chose to live in, is considered haunted by the locals and thus unfit to live in. The owner and namesake for the mansion, the beautiful and charming Bhargavi, and her untimely death cause extreme fear among the people. But these warnings and tell tales fall upon deaf ears, and our novelist pays no heed to these and continues to live there peacefully.
The story then progresses with the novelist deciding to write Bhargavi's story. Though Bhargavi never materializes in front of the writer, her angry outbursts like throwing away irrelevant pages in the well leave behind clues when an incident in her story moves away from reality. Our novelist succeeds in piecing together a story and concludes what really happened in Bhargavi's life. The story ends with unraveling the incidents leading to her death and finally giving meaning to her life, bringing about peace to the mansion and Bhargavi.