With Netflix dropping the much-awaited teaser for the final season of Stranger Things, fans are bracing for one final trip to Hawkins — a fictional town in Indiana, in the 1980s, where teenagers bike through forests, battle monsters, and hide their escapades from the clueless adults of the town. But for a moment, let’s replace Hawkins with a small town in India. Same decade. Same small-town energy. Still the 80s. Would the Upside Down survive that? Absolutely not.
Let’s start with the core premise of Stranger Things: A bunch of teenagers – Mike Wheeler, Dustin Henderson, Lucas Sinclair and Will Byers — who spend hours together (after school), unsupervised, fighting monsters in the woods. Back in the day, school, homework, playtime, helping with chores and constant adult supervision left very little room for that kind of freedom. Even an extra hour of park time came after a great amount of bargaining. The idea of bicycling after dark? You’d be met with angry and worried parents, threatening to sell the cycle that is spoiling their child. Also, they will never let you live down the incident for the rest of your life.
The Stranger Things gang operates as a relatively equal group, where Eleven, a young girl, is the central character and the protector of the town and her friends. In India in the ’80s, a young teenage girl navigating public spaces freely and without supervision, especially after dark, would raise far too many eyebrows. There is no version of a small town in India, both then and now, where Eleven could get away with aggression without being branded as spoilt or out of control. Even the idea of Max Mayfield, Eleven, or Nancy Wheeler being friends with the boys and hanging out with them would be a distant dream (a nightmare even, if an aunty in the neighbourhood snitches on you to your parents). Women’s agency, especially in small towns back then, was heavily policed – often by family, neighbours, and social expectations.
Even the unlikely friendship between Steve Harrington and the gang would be very unlikely, because their parents would have already warned them about being friends with a “bad influence”. And if not that, the age dynamics and the notion that older boys are too cool to hang out with the younger ones would stop their endearing friendship from ever taking off.
And then there’s the social structure of the towns in Stranger Things . In Hawkins, the kids can keep secrets. In small-town India? Not so much. Privacy was — and still is — a luxury. When you live in a small town, you know all your neighbours, and all of them know you. It’s like an extended family. Everyone notices everything, even a small change in routine. In that scenario, a new face in the colony would have at least three households speculating. The “secret mission” trope simply doesn’t hold when everyone knows everyone, and someone is always watching.
Even the parenting styles differ. Hawkins is filled with checked-out adults, the only exception being Joyce Byers and Jim Hopper. But in the India of the 1980s, most parents — regardless of class — were involved. Overinvolved, sometimes. Education, reputation, obedience — these weren’t just values, they were family expectations. Any sign of rebellion was met with curfews, not curiosity. You would never get to fight any monster when you barely get to pick your outfit.
The real question is not whether the monsters in Stranger Things could survive in small-town India. It’s whether the kids could.
anusree.kc@expressindia.com
