It clown can’t scare us, things crawl out of our gutters daily

BENGALURU: It — the adaptation of Stephen King’s iconic novel of the same name, released a few weeks back in India. While the film is setting fire to box offices around the world, its performance in India is just about lukewarm. And I can completely see why.

Indians who were born and brought up here are a very difficult audience to scare. When your everyday life is filled with horror and terrors, how is a movie going to scare you? Take for example the legendary scene where a kid is running after his paper boat and finds a clown in the gutter. Can you expect an Indian kid to be scared of that? We see overflowing gutters all through the year. And if a ghost did creep up, we’d assume it was a drunken municipality worker and ignore him.

Our water bodies are rather freaky by themselves. Take for example Hussain Sagar in Hyderabad — a lake so polluted, you can smell it long before you see it. And how is a citizen of Bengaluru supposed to fear a shape-shifting monster when toxic foam erupts out of a lake that sometimes catches fire?
What made It absolutely terrifying was the shape-shifting monster who takes the form of your worst nightmares, so as to feed on your fear. But if the monster were to come to India, what would Indians be scared of? Loud noises and spooky music? We have Diwali and Dussehra.

Scary masks and face paint? You should check our profile pictures during Holi. Train and road accidents? Every other week. Bridges collapsing on their own accord? Just last week, a bridge that had eaten up `400 crores on repair, crumbled a few hours before its inauguration.

Or take the everyday horrors of using the road in India. Speeding drunkards in the night, overtaking trucks coming from the opposite direction with their headlights on, like they’re Sunny Deol in Gadar! Or a friendly neighbourhood Gomaata strolling about on the roads during peak traffic. And if you happen to strike her by any chance, then god forbid the horrors her benefactors have in store for you!
Or take the horrors of using public amenities in India. Walk into a public bathroom, and your worst nightmares will dance in front of you. Enter the toilet in a railway station in India and you would get PTSD — post-traumatic stress disorder.

Or if these do not suffice, take a walk through Delhi in the night. Our newspapers are full of gory, nightmare- inducing, horrific stories. Like the optimistic kids in the novel, we aim to fight the horrors by holding hands and marching with candles in solidarity. Like the kids in the movie, our steps lead to no good whatsoever, for we still have to face the horrors, the terrors, the fears. And that is why Stephen King’s It will not laugh its way to the bank in India. You see, we are used to so much realistic horror that these celluloid versions don’t cut it for us anymore. May be if the film was called Stephen King’s ‘Spit’
Hriday is a writer and stand-up comedian based out of Hyderabad. His first book will be out when Saudi Arabia is a secular democracy.