8. U Rngiew – The Dark One

Scenes from myth along with multiple images of terror and menace are used to describe how the twisted nature of evil wreaks moral havoc. Here is a place that is dark and forbidding where the deadening sense of miasmic heat and torpor is inescapable. Images of sick elephants tottering helplessly into murky swamps and serpents coiling around every tree add to the atmosphere of malaise and lurking treachery. All the nightmares peopling the Khasi imagination are given free rein like the pursuing ‘hounds released by their Mother Fear’. The ruling deity and embodiment of all evil is The Dark One - U Rngiew - shape-shifter par excellence possessing the ability to lure and entrap.