Bhoothnath

Darna Zaroori hai

Bhoot

Vivek Sharma remembers those days when there was no one around him, but he could feel a refrigerator being softly opened. His 24-year-old cousin had died, and his aunt always kept some food for him in the fridge so that he wouldn’t ever go hungry. On some days, Sharma could see the inside light of the refrigerator; on other days, the bed sheets on his late cousin’s bed got crumpled without any reason.

“I have experienced the supernatural,” says Sharma, whose debut film Bhoothnath, starring Amitabh Bachchan, is all set for release on May 9. His cousin’s spirit, he says, continued to visit their house for eight or nine years — stopping only after a prayer was conducted there for another cousin’s wedding.

It’s easier to spook others when you believe in the spooky business. But the idea of a film based on the friendship between a ghost and a child evolved out of a discussion with a friend, recalls Sharma. “We were discussing why people were so God fearing, and somehow the conversation turned to how love could transform even a ghost into an angel.”

Sharma’s film is going to add to a genre of Hindi films — spanning the Ramsay Brothers’ lurid productions to the ear-piercing Ram Gopal Varma variety — that has found its eager takers among moviegoers. Indian cinema has often been accused of being a bit ham-handed when it comes to dealing with the supernatural, but the list of ghostly films is a long one — including films such as Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche, Shaitani Ilaaka, Bhoot, Kaun and Darna Zaroori Hai.

But the cinematic ghost, it must be said, has evolved over the years. Once, she wore a white saree and walked softly to the sounds of anklets tinkling, and an occasional violin screeching. Now there are good ghosts and bad ghosts. Some are good looking and some are hideous. They can float in the air or hit the gym. They can be wandering spirits in search of peace, or brand-conscious apparitions who can do rap. They cry, they laugh, they sing — they even dance, Bollywood style.

Small wonder then that big league actors — from Shah Rukh Khan to Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Deepika Padukone to Amitabh Bachchan, Urmila Matondkar to Naseeruddin Shah, Esha Deol to Ajay Devgan — have, at some point in their lives, attempted to scare an audience.

Bollywood’s ghost journey has had many stops. Madhubala was the quintessential wandering spirit in Mahal in 1949; Vyjanthimala was Dilip Kumar’s past in his earlier life in Madhumati (1958). The ghostly era of eerie mansions with tragic pasts was followed by the age of films such as Jaani Dushman (1979) in which Sanjeev Kumar was a werewolf attacking young brides dressed in the traditional red wedding robes. The Eighties saw a qualitative change in horror films when Padmini Kolhapure jumped on the bandwagon playing the Indianised version of The Exorcist’s possessed child in Gehraye. The Ramsay Brothers, who started with Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche in the early Seventies, continued to make their presence felt with stories about haunted houses, deformed creatures terrorising villages, possessed women with hair that defied gravity and chopped hands that apparently had a will of their own.

But the Bollywood ghost changed as cinema broke new ground. Naseeruddin Shah played a friendly and witty ghost in Chamatkar in 1992. Eight years later, Aishwarya Rai became a dazzling and ethereal ghost in Mohabbatein. Two years ago, Shah Rukh Khan played a ghost with a heart of gold in Paheli. Ram Gopal Varma — who proudly states that his cinema consists of gangsters, cops and ghosts — churned out a series of scary films. Last year, even Deepika Padukone made her debut in Om Shanti Om as a ghost.

Now Sharma hopes to add to Bollywood’s hall of terror with Bhootnath. “The supernatural has always attracted me. I believe in it but I also believe not all spirits are evil and that there are good spirits who mean no harm and need to be respected.”

Sharma’s encounters with his late cousin give his film the push it needs. It stars Amitabh Bachchan as an ugly but friendly ghost, Shah Rukh Khan, Juhi Chawla and child actor Aman Siddiqui.

Lyricist Javed Akhtar, who has seen parts of the film, says the theme isn’t quite a new one. “You often hear grandmothers recounting similar stories to their grandchildren,” he says. “But it is still a warm, sweet and wonderful story of comradeship between a ghost and a little boy. It’s humane, it’s compassionate and there is a sense of humour.”

And if you are wondering how the Big B and the Baadshah of Bollywood got along on the sets, the film crew tells us there was nothing spooky there. The two — often described as giant-sized rivals — were apparently at their natural best without any “media-hyped” friction. “The chemistry,” says Sharma “was good.” And that need not necessarily be attributed to the supernatural.