A little Halloween could well make the 24/7 terror of modern life a little more bearable
Halloween need not be seen as a mere import or even just an occasion to party in strange costumes and drink too much
Some hoary Halloween traditions, in fact, could well be imparting skills essential for surviving many of these mundane horrors. It may seem absurd to many that a festival of ghosts, witches and monsters should be celebrated with such enthusiasm each year in a country where daily life has enough actual horror. This certainly is one big justification offered by those who mock people for wearing plastic fangs and capes and taking their kids trick-or-treating on October 31. Then there are the usual sanskaar-based arguments trotted out by uncles and aunties on all occasions from Valentine’s Day to Thanksgiving, and the shaming by those who see in these celebrations yet another occasion for the sitcom-conditioned minds of urban Indians to spend their hard-earned money on tawdry decor and tacky costumes.
From another perspective, however, Halloween need not be seen as a mere import or even just an occasion to party in strange costumes and drink too much. It could, indeed, be recast as a mirror for the scary realities of the everyday. After all, the spooky elements for scary season are all right there and on view all through the year — from the ghosts of unfinished infrastructure projects and forgotten poll promises to the hair-raising revisions to school and college fees. One can see them in the fright-inducing electricity bills, the gaping potholes that threaten to swallow one’s vehicle whole and the annual medical reports of those living through the high-AQI hell.
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