The more that I venture out with my life in this here Americas, the more I am beginning to realize that I have many more things that I fear! For the longest time I thought my only fear was of the Invisible Man, but off late I am beginning to realize there are other fears as well! Fears that leave me cotton mouthed and foul tempered. Fears that wont let me close my shower curtain or close both my eyes while soaping up my face. Fears that make me clutch the God’s medallion around my neck looking for comfort when I hear ‘noises’. Fears that make me recite my favorite God’s chants hoping that would drive away the evil. Fears that accelerate my heart beat that I hear the pounding of blood near my temples. Fears that somehow draw fuel from other submerged memories of ghost stories and monster tales. The latest additions to my ever growing phobias?
Objects may be closer than they appear:
Consider this. A lonely, long winding road hugging the hills - a great wall of rock to your left and chest high weeds on the right beyond which lies a sheer drop to the ocean - night time drive in a car with friends who are fans of the horror fest “The Grudge”. The visibility reduces to a diverging cone of light originating from the headlights. No idea of what lies beyond the comfort of the light, vague shapes that suddenly jump at you when hit by them, vague shapes that turn out to be a gargoyle shaped rock or some eerie pattern woven together by the weeds that dissolve into their individual strands on being hit by the lights. How can you be sure that you will only see a rock or weeds? What if something that is monstrous beyond vocabulary steps out of the weeds? A thing half-rotten, flesh the blue green of decomposition, fanged teeth stained rust with blood of numerous victims past, a thing attired in something that could have been any color but has faded to a greenish gray of rot. Would your sanity stay with you even for the span of time that it would take for two blinks of your eyelids after witnessing such a sight? But then again, don’t you think insanity is a better option than being sane under such conditions? Would we have that luxury though?
Next up: “Better a landlubber”
PS: the friends that I mentioned have been coaxing to make me watch “the Grudge” (for their satisfaction, their names are DJ, Shaani and Sanju Baba) They agreed to all my conditions of taking control of the remote control, watching the movie in broad daylight and bringing my lame ass bead filled fish pillow! (I was never much of a soft toy person but this is somehow just the right size and has just the right consistency! I don’t miss the small pillow that I used to have back in India any more) but I am yet to watch it! I don’t think I’ll ever!
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