My fourth round of book-stores, and I’ve found nothing new. Half-empty shelves with old anthologies in new covers, a couple of new names I’ve already tried and tested, and another handful with blurbs that do scare me, but in an entirely different way. I beat a retreat, already mentally scanning new movie titles instead. An unavoidable option, since back on the bookracks, the pickings are slim to none. Honestly, I don’t understand why.
We do like being scared, don’t we? The last time I checked, exchanging ghost stories in a darkened room was one of the preferred means to pass the hour during load-shedding, and on bored afternoons, at least one cousin would suggest a round of planchette. Every family had one solemn it-happened-to-me story, usually starring great grandparents to reduce the chances of cross checking the facts. And then there were those friends who never objected to burrowing under blankets while the screen flashed with ghouls and monsters.
So, when I scan bookshelves, online and offline, and find that I can count the number of new Indian horror fiction titles in English on my fingers, it is baffling. Tucked between an endless list of Stephen Kings and Anne Rice and R.L. Stines, I find odd names here or there, high on ratings and reviews, but dishearteningly low on company.
As someone who enjoys horror, I go through these motions every once in a while, and a few months ago, it had yielded results. Kankana Basu’s Lamplight was a lucky discovery, full of eerie old-world charm, glowing with a sort of sepia tinted energy. Set in Bihar’s Monghyr, and telling tales of an aristocratic Bengali family from way back in 1934, it can’t help charm the chills out of anyone looking for a good scare. So this time around, when I find no new book to give this one a little competition, it is, for lack of a less pun-ny word, frightening.
Despite the general idea that horror is a popular genre, it would seem that in reality, it fails to garner readers. Based on the shelf space and number of new spines in the market, it’s in fact possible to say that horror seems to have only a niche readership. Arnab Ray, who published his psychological horror novel The Mine , feels that the Indian reader would rather not read something that’s too separate from the reality, and too unpalatable. “Normally Indian readership wants familiar things. They want campus romances, they like stories about friends and girlfriends. Stories that are close to real life encounters. By definition, horror doesn’t make the cut.”
Or perhaps, it would be fair to say that only a type of horror sells. Once upon a time, werewolves and vampires crowding the shelves could give a boost to the popularity of the genre. Today, too busy falling in love and experiencing the kind of teenage angst more suitable in another section, these supernaturals don’t quite make it as horror. Arnab says that today, “horror of a particular type sells.” Drawing a comparison with Bollywood, he cites the kind of movies being made today. “The horror today has to come with some standard trappings.” Even these trappings, though, do not guarantee publishing or readership.
Browsing the forthcoming titles of publishing houses proves the lack of books in this genre, and some have done away with the separate section for it altogether. Perhaps the deficiency can be explained not just by the reluctance of publishers and readers, but also of writers. “Why do you write a book? It’s because you read that kind of book. And in India, very few people read horror,” says Arnab.
We have never been a country with our own Stephen King. No killer cars and telekinetic powers for us. We do have brilliant offerings from the likes of Satyajit Ray and Ruskin Bond, but Arnab feels that it would be untrue to call either of them horror writers. “Satyajit Ray did write horror, but by then he was already an established name. Horror was a small part of what he wrote. The same applies to Ruskin Bond. Nobody can say that they were writers who just wrote horror.”
This is, of course, very true. Even today, Ray’s name summons for most of his fans images of Pather Panchali or Feluda . Very rarely do Fritz or Khagam make an appearance. And while Bond himself has quite often expressed his intense love for writing and reading horror, he is primarily famous for his other, more widely read stories.
There is, both fortunately and unfortunately, so much untapped material in the country, just waiting to be crafted into frightening, dread inducing stories. And it’s strange that while it’s easy to find a neighbour or a friend who will tell you his personal tale of terror with noticeable glee and enthusiasm, the written word finds few takers. Perhaps we are only waiting for quality, and the current penchant for badly made up monsters and hammy dialogues has both influenced and ruined our palate.
Perhaps, if we did find our own Stephen King, we would find his fans too.
