My mother was a strange creature. A literary paheli. A school teacher all her life, she had only two real passions. Buying cotton saris and reading. She would find shortcuts for everything, just so she’d have more time to read. On her way back from school, she’d often buy dal and vegetable pakoras from dhabas, and send me or my brother to fetch hot rotis from the dhaba across our house. That was our lunch on most weekdays.
She read the Ramayan and Mahabharat over and over again, along with their various scholarly interpretations. She loved satirical short stories and Hindi poetry. But she had one guilty pleasure she was mildly embarrassed of — once a month, for about two days at a stretch, she’d be horizontal on her bed, glued to Manohar Kahaniyan. She would not put it down till she had read it cover to cover.
The next time you are at a bus or railway station, go to a magazine stall and flip through this magazine.
It reports true crime stories that are written salaciously, spotlighting blood and deceit and sex. In between tales of property and love deals gone sour are stories from strange villages and towns where aghori babas, and not electronics dealers, are the go-to-guys if milk in the house curdles way too often. Mostly these are stories of women turning into nagins or bhootnis to extract revenge.
I trace my massive appetite for gore and curious interest in crime to those days.
A 26-episode TV show on true love stories that turned deadly
So imagine my delight when I came upon Vikram Bhatt directed Ishq Kills (Star Plus). A 26-episode TV show on true love stories that turned deadly. The first episode I watched was about a man who coaxed his wife into becoming a high-charging call girl and spent her earning on his girlfriends. The wife eventually came to her senses, took charge of her finances and ran her business herself, reducing him to a crabby guest in her house. Murder, suicide follows.
But the most interesting was the third episode. It was about a man working for a politician, buying MLAs and bumping off rivals. Because he travelled a lot, he had four wives in four cities. His happy hours ended when he fell in love with a hotel executive who, on karva chauth night, fed him kheer laced with poison. She pocketed his crores and modus operandi.
If you like B-grade crime thrillers, watch this. It’s fabulous.
