Karan Kandhari’s Sister Midnight, set in Mumbai, shows the protagonist Uma stuck in an unconsummated marriage with Gopal. In this comedy about the mundane, there comes a twist when Uma starts sucking blood out of birds and goats, and, finally, devours her own husband, adorning his corpse with fairy lights and keeping his frozen, clam-like eyes open and his teeth exposed in a scene too startling for words. On the door of her matchbox-sized tenement Uma’s neighbours write: Daayan. Witch.
The brashness of Sister Midnight impressed me, even if it left many loose ends. Since I was still in the mood for horror, I decided to try Zach Creggar’s Weapons. Set in an American town called Maybrook, Weapons’ backdrop is an elementary school with 18 students in the third grade under their teacher Justine Gandy. One night, 17 of those 18 children run out of their houses and are never found. Only a boy named Alex Lilly is left. A bereft father scrawls WITCH on Miss Gandy’s car, taking me back to Sister Midnight.
Even though Weapons tied up most loose ends, I could not help wondering if a scenario like Weapons would be possible in the milieu I come from. The children disappear in Weapons because of witchcraft, the witch being Gladys, the grand aunt of Alex, the only child to not disappear. Ill and alone, she comes to stay with the Lillys because she has no other family. And then things change.
Coming from a place where women who live alone, especially if they are eccentric or out of place in any way, are accused of being witches, I found the acceptance of Gladys by Alex’s parents somewhat misplaced. In my world, thanks to our grapevine of relatives and acquaintances — even though we might not be on good terms with them — we know which aunt and which uncle live alone and why they need help and whether — conditions apply — we should risk helping them at all. In my world, there would have been whispers of “Uni doy dan kana” — Santali for “She is a witch” — for a single aunt fallen on bad times who would have, through her life, not toed the line of society. Since there are no gendered pronouns in Santali, the term could well be used for an uncle as well. I have been cautioned several times against talking to or accepting food from certain people or entering certain houses for reasons that may seem hokum in this age of AI but which still influences lives in the place I come from. Both Sister Midnight and Weapons kept up the stereotypical portrayal of the deviant being a sociopath.
In the place I come from, unmarried people and those who live alone — whether out of choice or circumstance — are subjects of either pity, if they’re women, or ridicule, if they’re men. Since it is subjective, the reverse too could be true: Women ridiculed, and men pitied. In Weapons, the arrival of Aunt Gladys — technically an elderly, single woman — into the Lilly household is equated to the intrusion by a parasite. In my world, in several communities, I have seen elderly single men and women turning into hosts for parasites who are — hold your breath — able-bodied individuals with spouses and children of their own and whose only claim to acceptance in this society is that they are married and have perpetuated their line. Worse, my world hurls judgements on the elderly, single host. “He/She had it coming.” “Why didn’t he get married and have children of his own? His wealth will be eaten by his brothers’ children.”
Sister Midnight and Weapons show two disparate societies: One so isolated that even life-saving gossip does not reach you; and the other, where you might be abhorred by most, but where you will also find solace among other oddballs like you, like how Uma finds, in her uninhibited neighbour Sheetal and her hijra friends.
Now to decide, which of the two films I liked best.
Shekhar is a writer and translator
