How I Love Getting Scared!

Scribbler inspires all over again. So here I am, writing about similar things…my obsession with the supernatural, this time. Of course, Scribbler says she’s scared to watch any horror flick. For me, the equation is a tad different. I love watching horror flicks. And I love getting goose pimples all the way from the stem of my receding hairline till the tip of my bruised and broken toe nails (Bruised and broken because today, someone at work ran a whole god dammed chair across my feet…however incredible that sounds…talk about corporate back-biting and competition…this is physical assault folks!).
Anyway, horror for me is a stress-buster, an anti-depressant, and an aphrodisiac. When I watch horror movies, I prefer being alone. I will do a lot of inane things like shut the doors and windows, use a chair from the dining table as a defense wall between me in the room and the ghost in the television set etc. (Lest the ghost a la The Ring just pops out of the screen). Needless to say, my husband gets uber exasperated when I begin such unadulterated dementia…but that’s the thrill of it…don’t you think?
Going to the loo, I agree, is a huge challenge after The Grudge kind of movies, where the spirit kills indiscriminately. Every single person dies…I wonder what the spirit does after that…die of sheer boredom and lack of better sense? You need at least one living soul to scare the hell out of…what say?
Come to think of it, going to the loo in the dark is a mind-blowing challenge any day, irrespective of whether you’ve watched The Grudge or not. Even if going to the loo can be somehow managed without severe damage to self-esteem, coming back to the room is a horrendous nightmare. I get this absolutely ridiculous idea time and again that the bored spirit is going to whack me, suddenly block my way, or on a more aggressive note, pull out whatever is left of my hair (at the end of a tough corporate week).
Something as mindless as Vaastu Shastra made me do something more mindless than the movie itself. We had gone to the forests of Karnataka yet again. The bungalow was eerie, to put it mildly. I suddenly recalled the horror in Vaastu Shastra and suggested that all of us should move together, and sleep in one room at night. There was a newly married couple who had traveled with us then, with bags of Kamasutras and dreams of achieving sexual sublimity. They haven’t forgiven us till date, I ‘m sure.
I remember another incident back at the in-laws…when I was supposed to be this low-key, soft-spoken, newly-wed, coy bride. The house is huge, replete with Belgian architecture; sprawling verandahs where you can spot a frail shadow in a white saree even during breakfast. The loo is at one end of the verandah (I’m genuinely sorry how most of these stories have something to do with the bladder). Too embarrassed to admit that I was scared, I went to the loo alone one night. My husband, being largely insensitive for most parts of my two and a half year old married life, didn’t realize that I might want him to wait on me outside the door. My father-in-law however guessed that I might need help. The sad part of the story is that I didn’t know he would be waiting. The moment I saw a dark form outside the door, I let out an earth-shattering scream with flaring nostrils and tightened knuckles, letting go of the mild coyness that I had promised to exhibit. The next action, I still don’t believe I did it, and it happened in a jiffy…I picked up a broom from somewhere and rushed at the figure. By then the larger family of aunts and uncles and cousins and cousins’ children had gathered around the place, and someone switched the lights on. I don’t think I have it in me to describe the pained embarrassment of the moment. My father-in-law, poor man, was flabbergasted, having been threatened with a broom by a should-be-shy bride. Everything of course, dissolved in mad laughter, and the story became quite a legend.
There are many more such thrills and horror movie-influenced moments in my life. I’m afraid if I don’t stop, a lot of you would know many more embarrassing details of my life, which I’d rather not divulge otherwise. So, for sanity’s sake… adiós!

Childhood: Lost and Forgotten

Here comes Scribbler’s tag again…and so I write once more, as per her request. But if you ask me, I don’t have specific memories like Scribbler does. Childhood for me has been a set of vague and beautifully melancholic moments…the kind KG was talking about the other day…moments that make you feel nicely weepy, and you enjoy rolling in that melancholy, realizing how oddly fascinating it is.
I am not sure if I am able to explain myself to any of my readers. If you want it simply, of course there have been those days when I would painstakingly accompany my dad to the robbarer bajaar just to pick up a Bikram aur Betaal comics, a cheap yo yo, or a pair of red sunglasses with a lion sticker in the middle, on the way back home. Ma would scream and make my hidden agenda quite public. But I would unabashedly accompany Baba again the following Sunday. Then there were days when I would feed the crows my share of bread and Druke’s orange marmalade, just because I was bored with the same old Tiffin Ma would give me every day. Once I puked on myself (however impossible that sounds; people usually aim at neighbours)…I was in the nursery class, and a compassionate nun sent me home with only my skirt on…can you beat it? Then there was this one instance when I chased a hen…for whatever paranormal reason…got pecked big time by the hen in return…this was in a remote place called Amarda…wherever that is.
My biggest childhood memories of course revolve round my sickening fixation with the supernatural…my loyal attachment to Ramsay horror shows. I would stay put in front of the television, watch the horror shows, and invariably roll down the bed, carrying with me the mosquito net and the paraphernalia, or squiggle in between my parents in the wee hours of the night, completely delirious with fright.
The beautifully melancholic parts of my memories however, pertain to all my vacations in school…when I used to visit my dad in North Bengal, where he was posted. If it was summer, I remember sitting in the backyard, by an old swing and an old well, counting martins, and thinking how lucky or unlucky I would be. If it was winter, I remember running for the quilt after lunch, ready for a siesta, smelling the sun in the warm quilt covers. Sometimes my grandmother would send some tetuler achaar (sweet tamarind pickle…I thought I should translate this one…way too remote for my non-Bong readers), and I would wallow in its tangy taste, gazing at the squeaky clean sky from the bedside window.

Gone are those winters, and the alluring smell of sunshine. These days, all we think about is work, money, promotions, and sometimes, well just sometimes, global warming. Kids play with mindless gizmos. The good old tales of a petni or a kimbhooth (Bengali names for two ghost varieties) do not fascinate them anymore. Maybe, forty years from now, a kid, if asked about childhood memories, will talk about how he had a whale of a time, listening to music on his dad’s Mac...or better still, how he drank all the sugarcane juice, stuff that his dad had saved to make alternative fuel!!!

Phoonk: How RGV is Barking Up the Wrong Tree!

Ever since I can remember, I’ve had an obsessive inclination towards the Frankestiens, the Count Draculas, all versions of Friday the 13ths (strictly for the birds) and off late, towards the desi Raats, Bhoots, and of course Phoonk.
Ram Gopal Verma (RGV) had impressed me slightly with Raat (1992), where we had a young Revathi getting possessed at the drop of a hat, sending a chill down any ready spine. Bhoot (2003) was even better, apart from the occasional overdose of completely demented sound effects. But Phoonk? What was this guy thinking?

We have a rich young couple (they almost always are, living in a duplex and driving a CR-V), two saccharine-sweet kids, and a nervous mother with a shaking head, to start with. The man in the family is a confirmed atheist until everything in his life turns topsy-turvy, and his daughter, one of the two kids, becomes possessed by some random spirit. Our brave man becomes a believer, gets hold of a thoroughly obtuse quack, and cures his daughter. End of story.

Would you pay good money to watch this? Well, until recently, I would, being oblivious of the total lack of control on the part of RGV. To begin with, it’s bad logic to transform the atheist of the plot into a believer. This is an open invitation to primitivism in a country which is already smitten by Senas and Parishads, and Vedikes of every possible kind.

Back to the rich couple. The man throws out a criminal couple in the middle of some celebration. The couple swears revenge. Unfortunately for the rich couple, the criminal couple knows black magic. Sad.

What follows is a ridiculous blend of The Omen (both 1976 & 2006), The Exorcist (1973) and every other cult horror flick possible. There is a crow that watches everything from a vague treetop, a delirious black magician who wreaks havoc on the kid, and by the end of it all, you wish the sound system of the theatre was non-functional.

For someone who has tolerated absurd horror flicks like Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter (1966) and I Eat Your Skin (1971), I would have soaked in the absurdity of Phoonk too, had a few things been set right. However, the RGV factory decided to spoil my party with a misplaced storyline, bad ideology and demented background score once more. As a result, my horror-hunger continues…