Monks,
I did in fact come up with a way to call a function written in C from a Perl script using Inline. See below for the C source code and the Perl script:

#include <stdio.h>

int x;
int sum;

int main() {
    pure_c();
    return (0);
}

pure_c() {
    for (x = 0; x < 100; ++x) {
        sum = sum + x;
        printf("%d\n", sum);
    }
    return (0);
} /* end of pure_c */

#!/usr/local/perl/5.6.1.4/bin/perl -w

use ConsistentSet "1.0.2";  # This finds the library Inline
no AutoLoader;

use Inline C => 'DATA';

c_wrapper();

__DATA__
__C__
#include "c_test.c"

int c_wrapper()
{
    pure_c();
    printf("After pure_c\n");
    return (0);
}
[download]

Thanks to all who gave comments and suggestions!! :)
***ginttu***