The horror in the film Night of the Living Dead was a work of fiction, but in 1971 I lived through a night no less harrowing as a six-year-old with my widowed mother and two-year-old sister. Being trapped in our own house in remote Kalarabanka, an obscure village in the then Cuttack district, we were dying every moment while expecting a miraculous escape from the ordeal. Today when I look back, I shudder to think what could have happened to us in what could well be counted as the darkest night of our lives. The thought of that fateful night still runs a shiver down my spine. That night, hunger and poverty with all vengeance seemed to have joined the fury of nature to entrap us, but we overcame because…