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Director of Amrish Puri-Padmini Kolhapure horror film was warned not to dabble in black magic, received complaints from audiences who watched it

Aruna Raje and Vikas Desai made Gehrayee, a film based on a family's brush with black magic. Aruna took inspiration from her personal life experience, but making the film came at a personal cost.

Padmini Kolhapure in Gehrayee. (Photo: IMDb)

Long before Shaitaan, director Aruna Raje, the recipient of six national awards, made a horror thriller film titled Gehrayee (1980). Co-written by the renowned playwright Vijay Tendulkar, the film was based on a family’s experience with black magic. While writing the film, Aruna said that she met several tantrics. She was warned not to dabble in black magic, and she admitted that life took a turn for the worse afterwards. In a recent interview with Bollywood Crypt, Aruna Raje shared, “Vikas Desai and I considered ourselves as storytellers. We were open to any story that was engaging, that’s exciting–if it is exciting us, it might excite the audience.”

She revealed that the idea of Gehrayee came to her from a personal experience. “When I used to live with my family in Bangalore, every day, my mother would find something in the garden. Some little lemon with haldi or kum kum on it. People would practice black magic–especially in politics.” She shared that her father was a freedom fighter who eventually became a politician. “So it was not unheard of to find all these things in our garden.”

Gehrayee. (Photo: IMDb)

She continued, “When I got a chance to make something, I was like ‘Why don’t we make something concerning black magic. And, then we started doing research. Interestingly, Vijay Tendulkar was with us on this script. So, there were three of us writing the script. We interviewed a lot of people. We came across very interesting stories.”

Aruna said that the character played by Padmani Kolhapure was inspired by a story she was told during the research phase. “We found a person who was actually possessed by a strange character. The person possessed was a Catholic, and the person who possessed her was some Muslim girl from Lucknow. What surprised us was that when the girl was possessed, she would speak superb Urdu. She would do sher-shayari. It was so inspiring to hear these stories that showed things like this are actually happening.”

Gehrayee. (Photo: IMDb)

She added, “So many people were in touch with us. We met so many black magicians and white magicians. The film just grew and grew until we finalised a direction for it.”

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But her experience wasn’t entirely positive. “Another important thing is… we shouldn’t dabble into these things personally. Mostly because we don’t know the outcome. Everybody has warned us: ‘Don’t do this film, all sorts of things will happen to you’. We were not so superstitious, so we would always say, ‘Arey, they are only retelling stories. We are only making a film.’ We made the film anyway, but things did go bad. They would go bad anyway, I suppose.”

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Just a couple of years after the film, Aruna divorced her husband. She lost her nine-year-old daughter to cancer.

Recalling incidents from after the film’s release, Aruna shared, “People were scared. After the film was released, we got hundreds of calls–people saying this problem is happening, the food got spoilt, something else has happened. They would ask for help and contacts of tantrics and mantrics. But, we couldn’t do that. We couldn’t give them phone numbers. We didn’t know who are phony and who are real when it comes to tantrics.”

The film starred Anant Nag, Padmini Kolhapure, Sriram Lagoo, and Indrani Mukherjee. Actor Amrish Puri had a guest appearance in the film.

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