When Kavitha was at junior school, she invited her friends to come around and play with her one Saturday. By lunchtime she asked me if she could get some videos from the local newsagent to watch and I said that it was fine. I thought that she might be getting some girly videos to watch as she was a sensible girl. After lunch they all sat and watched the video. At some point, I can’t remember what prompted me, but I went to check up on them. One of the girls was now hiding behind the settee. The rest were sitting there wide eyed and looking terrified. I think the only person who was enjoying herself was Kavitha. They were watching a horror film. I quickly stopped the video and as I was doing this, one of the parents knocked on the door. The next few days, I waited with bated breath thinking that the parents were going to ring me up and complain. Luckily I didn’t hear anything and no harm came out of it or so I think.
There have been days, when I get back from work and find Kavitha sitting in a dark room with the curtains drawn watching horror films. I really don’t know how it started or where this fascination came from.
As she grew older, I heard on the radio once that there were ambulances waiting outside cinemas when the ‘Saw’ films were screened at Halloween time to take fainting and collapsed viewers away. She has watched all of them and when I quizzed her, said that they were not scary at all. The only time she says that she had nightmares was after watching ‘Insidious’- a movie about a demon that infiltrated dreams.
In my college days, I went to watch ‘The Omen’ and ‘The Exorcist’ and was completely traumatised by the experience. I don’t think I was even watching the screen during the shows. I think I just went along with my friends because I couldn’t face telling them how scared I was. I even tried watching ‘The Omen’ on the telly recently and couldn’t do it.
When I told one of my friends these stories recently, his response was that I must have been a ‘horror mama’ and had terrorised the poor kid so much that she ended up not being frightened of horror movies. Her dad seems to agree with this theory. I have a feeling that she might agree as well when she reads this.
