BENGALURU: I recently tried watching a horror film just for the thrill. In the past, people watched films to laugh, cry or get motivated. Now I watch films in the hope of feeling something. Anything.
I scroll through the selection like my father scrolls through a buffet and find that it is difficult to be moved by anything anymore. Even horror films, the most emotionally charged of all genres, do not make me flinch.
I am not particularly afraid of ghosts. Of course, I listened to all the stories. My grandmother was once attacked by a ghost. She quickly grabbed the Bhagavad Gita from under her pillow and the ghost scurried away. At school, rumors started about a ghost called “Shambhulingam” who caught people going to the bathroom at night. The ghosts in my settlement ate children who walked alone in the streets. My aunts told me about a vagrant who picked up naughty children. Gradually, a pattern began to emerge. Each ghost attacked the children who did not follow the established rules.
If ghosts really do exist, they should pay filmmakers to cement their identity over decades, to raise people’s awareness and keep them relevant. Ghosts in films had their own rules. They would disappear if shown a cross or an image of God. Priests and scholars seemed superior to them. It’s just a theory, but since most books and films are made by men, most ghosts are women dressed in white. They want to seduce men and eventually kill them. Their hair is perfectly washed and groomed – like in an advert for ‘Loreal – because you’re dead, baby’! Interestingly, the ghosts and monsters created by female writers like Toni Morrison and Mary Shelley were a bit more human!
But horror movies still freaked me out. I remember screaming out loud when the security guard got his head twisted in Bhoot. Or when the girl in the white dress came out of the TV and asked for parachute oil for her hair. My disillusionment with ghosts was due to two reasons. First, I stopped believing in God. And although the one-time shadow scared me, I found it ridiculous to believe in ghosts after rejecting the idea of God. Most people who believe in God also believe in ghosts, black magic and other unexplained phenomena like Baba Ramdev’s Coronil.
