100 Din ki Movie

Currently it is the season of counting the 100 days of Government, in which people are trying to analyze what the govt. has done, undone, not done, got done, dan dana done…

But for me 100 and days, when these two words come together, it is just a horror.. and a real horror.. of a movie called 100 days !!
It all began with a call to my friend, who lived just a couple of blocks my home, and whom I had just met on the football field, just an hour back, where we had discussed the serious nature of Brazil, Germany and Argentina, and their world cup fortunes..in those serious discussion as usual, trivial topics like tomorrow’s due homework got missed out, hence the call…to confirm what all homework is not done by us, and which of those is likely to cause us trouble the next day..
anyways towards the end of that call, my friend exclaimed, that on Cable the movie 100 days has started, and asked me in your house which movie is there,,, really,, we lived at a distance of couple of blocks, and hence the same cable provider was there, yet my friend had the audacity of asking, which movie at your end… I said,,XX YY ZZZ same..
100 days was supposed to be a horror movie, so I was expecting ghosts and all, but it turned out to be a suspense thriller, with an extraordinary background score, and a very gradual built up to the suspense, with intense nerve racking moments..
next day, I met my friend all school, we were classmates and bench mates, and he looked at me and said,,, “I don’t know why the movie was called 100 Days,, what is the logic of it !!!”, I looked at him, I could see bags under his eyes, his shoulders had dropped, and he looked like he had climbed Everest, I asked him, ” You did not sleep yesterday night didn’t you”
how did I know?? , because I also had not slept that night, the movie had shaken me to the core, I was horrified, petrified,, and that music kept on ringing in my ears. In the dim night light I kept of starting at the 3 inch thick walls of my house, wondering if a skeleton might be embedded in one of them, every time I closed my eyes, the movie would replay in my mind, ultimately I was scared of closing my eyes, which kept me wide awake entire night, hence the bags under the eyes, and the fatigue…which I could see in my friend..
he remarked, “you also did not sleep ,,, what a horror movie..” In all this our conversation was broken by he arrival of our third bench partner, (yes three people sat on a bench, and wrote in their notebooks, pushing and shoving each others shoulders).. he came and said, “Yaar, today our cable wala is going to put 100 days at night”.. we looked at him, and said in unison “we saw it yesterday (scored a point over you !!!) , and then we proceeded to say “you should watch the movie, brilliant, ek number, you will enjoy it thoroughly “….. this behavior of us was captured years later in a hindi song, “har ek dost kamina hota hai”
next day,, there were three of us who were on the bench saying “yaar, 100 days naam ka logic is not there, the movie does not happen in 100 days, there is nothing in it which justifies the title,,,,,,”
what happened next?, well I had to take medication for sleep from our family doctor, apparently it was paracetamol, disguised as a magic sleep medicine,,, this was after I woke up in the middle of the night and shouted loudly, “Mummy, Papa, where are you..”.. I was banned from watching horror movies at home,, I don’t know what happened to my friends, never discuss your fears in class is the motto at Crescent.
Did it stop me from watching horror movies?, no, curiosity kills the cat, but the cat does not stop being curious..
The only thing was I was better prepared next time,, I watched Dimple Kapadia’s KAFAN (or an actress who looked like Dimple), I watched it at 2pm in the afternoon, kept the TV ON in the hallway, kept gallery and front door open so there was light, lots of it, and also the open doors meant that in crucial moments I could run away from the front door, and watch the movie from a distance of 25 meters, from outside the house.. but I did manage to see the movie..and kept the tradition alive or watching the movie in fear, yet watching it with fear
latest one that was scary was “The Conjuring” again a slow and steady built up of suspense, equally extraordinary background music, and slow pace of the movie,, and it was similar to 100 days in one more sense, after the movie, our discussion focused on an equally illogical thing,,”why was the doll Annabel shown in the movie, what is the logic of the doll !!!”
Anyways it took me while to watch 100 days again, precisely 20 yrs later, I could muster up the courage to watch it again..and yes it was equally terrifying even though I knew the suspense of the movie by heart, it has been etched in my brain.