Halloween Weekend

In here, people spend one day a year indulging themselves and their other like-minded friends fancy dressing on the streets, in office, at homes. You walk down the streets on Halloween and you would see people of all age and shape dressed up. I have seen people dressed as trash cans, fruits and vegetables, science fiction characters, and what not. The lady at the front door in office sat in her witch costume, mink coat, and the black magic wand the whole day. Ever imagined our parents going to offices dressed as Hanuman and Gadaadhaari Bhim? This country is crazy.

I have done two unique things this Halloween. Three in fact. One, much to the disappointment of my friends, I did not indulge my time and money picking up a Halloween costume. My friends reiterated again and again how un-cool and un-sporty I am, but I refused to give in to the temptation and spend $50 going to a party dressed up like a spider pig. Two, I carved a pumpkin for the first time. Again, I resisted and did not want to. But people around me sat on floors with pumpkins and dozen knives all around them, unleashing their creative self and carving out figures on pumpkins. It did feel weird at first, carving out the hard cover and then putting your hand inside to scoop out the gooey mass from within. But once the insides of the pumpkin was clean, I was free to carve designs the way I wanted to. Since it was Diwali weekend as well, I carved diyas all over the pumpkin before placing a lit candle inside. My hands smelled like pumpkins for days despite all the soaping, reminding me of this term in Bengali "kumro-potash" with God knows what meaning. During this time of the year when pumpkin is harvested, people use pumpkins in all kinds of food, even in desserts and in Starbucks coffee ! Been years since I have had 2 very tasty Bengali dishes made of pumpkins- kumror chokka (curry made with cubed pumpkin) and kumro fool bhaja (pumpkin flowers fried in besan).

Third, I spent an entire 12 hours with friends watching horror movies. I am not at all into horror movies. But my friends wanted to spend Halloween watching horror movies, and there it goes. The descent wasn’t liked much by my friends for all the blood and gore. However, I found it interesting that they should make a film about 5 women trapped inside a cave with no way to get out. I would seriously feel claustrophobic watching them crawl inside the caves. The concept was very interesting. I don’t care about the other two movies, but the last movie Shutter was just amazing. Every moment of it chilled me to the core. It’s about a photographer who takes pictures of his girlfriend during her graduation, only to find a pattern of shadow in every snapshot, and therein the story unfolds. I have been traumatized for days now, thinking of every scene of the movie. It’s worse when you don’t have another living soul in the house. Truth be told, my mind has been playing tricks, and I have been shit scared even going to the bathroom. Anyway, the movie Shutter is a must watch, really. The Thai version, and not the American version.

So there goes the story of my Halloween weekend.

sunshine