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Relevance of Horror in Literature

                  My first tryst with horror was The Zee Horror Show. One would argue that Duck Tales and TaleSpin were more suitable for an eight-year-old. But the intriguing charm of the new horror show, the first of its kind on Indian television, was hard to ignore. Most episodes were rooted in superstition and dark magic. The actors who played the roles of ghosts were almost always in low-budget prosthetic makeup – a desperate attempt by the makers to scare the audience. That didn’t scare me at all. What really scared me, however, was the reaction of the characters to the situations they were often thrown in.           Stand behind a door and say ‘Boo!’ and you may startle a few. But if you were to tell them a backstory about a young man who never left his room and went mad before strangling himself to death. If you were to then guide them into the room, slowly, they will imagine the rest and scare th...

11.22.63, Stephen King

               The first Stephen King book I read was  Cujo , and I have been in love with his writing ever since (“I’m your number one fan” and all that). A friendly Saint Bernard dog gets bitten by a bat, becomes rabid, and goes on a killing spree—that’s  Cujo  in a nutshell. But the novel’s much more than that. Stephen King is Stephen King, not because of the horror and the gore, but because of the way he writes his characters. Anyway,  Cujo ’s for another day. Today, I’d like to talk a little bit about  11/22/63 . Too late to the party, but I finally read it.  So far, I have breezed through about seventy percent of King’s books (I’m so glad there are more to read). If you’d asked me five days ago what my top favourite was, I’d have said  It  without missing a beat. But now,  11/22/63  takes the top spot for many reasons.  The premise is simple enough: The year is 2011. Jake Epping is ...

Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri

Lahiri, Jhumpa.  Unaccustomed Earth . Penguin Random House, 2017. Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth is a commentary on the Indian diaspora. The characters in these stories are Indian immigrants who belong to the upper middle-class. They are very much American in every way but are burdened by their cultural past.   The title story “Unaccustomed Earth” explores the complex relationship between a daughter and her father. “Only Goodness” tells the story of Rahul, a flawed son of successful parents, and his descent into alcoholism. “Hell-Heaven” is a story of troubled relationship between mother and daughter; it is also a story about a married woman (the narrator’s mother) who is troubled by cultural differences and the inability to acclimatize to a new lifestyle in a new country. “Nobody’s Business” is a complex love story of Paul and Sang.   All these stories explore the identity crisis of Indian immigrants and their struggles to navigate through different cultures while t...