No 'splatterpunk' for author Bhasme; he sticks to King’s kind of horror to allegorise social evils

Bengaluru, July 4 (PTI) For author Ajinkya Bhasme, horror is not just a genre to scare, startle, shock or even repulse audiences. It's a platform that lets him allegorise social evils, particularly people's attitude towards mental illnesses, to bring about awareness.

Post 1990, the world of horror might have been steered towards what is termed as “splatterpunk”, where nothing is left to imagination. The New York Times, officially acknowledging the trend in an article published on March 24, 1991, described it as “nauseating cheap thrill that succeeds in its desire to revolt”.

But Bhasme steers clear of this sub-genre. Instead, inspired by the master of horror Stephen King, believes that mere suggestion can tingle the spine just as well.

Taking a page out of King's kind of horror, Bhasme says he carefully links myths and lores of yores, science and inherently flawed but human traits to cook up his story.

“My book, ‘As Death Stared Back’, for instance, explores Capgras delusion. Affected by it, my main character sets in motion a series of events that I slowly unravel, revealing to the audiences the real culprit,” said Bhasme.

According to Bhasme, his first book, released in 2018, came about because of an existential question that plagued him since his teens – “why do humans do what they do”.

As a child, Bhasme says he was so hungry for stories that his parents ran out of the routine ones involving kings, queens and fairytales, and even those narrated from epics and puranas. His mother, a criminal lawyer, had to make do with the real-life ones that she came across professionally.

“That is how I was told about the two sisters – India’s first women serial killers – who abducted babies and children and killed them. I think it was around 1996, and my mother, who watched this particular case when it went on trial, prosecuted by famous advocate Ujjwal Nikam. Just listening to it gave me such chills,” says Bhasme.

The story left a profound effect on him that he said he started poking around the world of deviant psychology, trying to comprehend why would human beings do such a thing.

“One thing led to the other, I started dabbling in psychotherapy and forensic psychology. I soon had this book in me that wanted to come out,” says this IIT chemical engineer, who was by then working as a scientist in Dr Reddy’s, doing research on life-saving drugs.

Fast-paced and racy, spooky and entertaining… these are some of the adjectives the readers of his books use, trying to describe his kind of horror that was, according to him, “coming from a deep place”.

Flush with the surprising hit of ‘Tumbbad’, it didn’t take Bollywood long to latch on to this source material.

“That did turn out quite well for me, yes. All my books, including the ones I am writing in future, are acquired by production houses,” says Bhasme.

The one about serial killers is the fodder for a web series, while his third book, ‘7 hours at Bhata Road’, a full-length feature, starring Vatsal Seth and Ishita Dutta, will be releasing soon. The book uses intrigue and the concept of 27 levels of hell described in Vishnupuran to tell the horrors of the mostly misunderstood epilepsy.

On July 5, Bhasme will be launching his latest book, ‘In The Rotten Pits Of Hunger’. Bhasme says the book was born because he felt the need to bring attention to the unequal distribution of resources in India.

“The numbers are staggering. Eight hundred million people are sleeping in hunger at night. Nearly 45% children die due to hunger and starvation. Two billion do not have access to healthy food. To put it more bluntly, my strawberry face wash has more fruit than most people. This is not right,” said Bhasme.

But, of course, he is not putting this point across bluntly in his book. He dusts the legends around Annamathi, the darker manifestation of more popular Annapoorna, to let intrigue build up the outrage.

Bhasme says he is lucky because he can take time to flesh out his stories.

“Until quite recently, I have always held a full-time job. My last job was with Bengaluru-based Swiss Re, where I was vice-president. In a way, this was of great help for the writer in me. As I did not have to depend on writing for a living, I was able to write what I wanted and when I wanted,” says Bhasme.

Interestingly, he quit his job not to pursue writing full-time – as one would expect from a commercially successful writer – but to carry forward his agenda towards mental health.

“Even the most educated people that I encounter do not know the basics of mental health. We fail to recognise the difference between dissociative identity disorder and schizophrenia, or misclassify an anxiety attack for just acidity,” says Bhasme.

To tackle this, he says he developed a website called ‘Zealopia’ that allows people to take charge of their own mental health. It uses techniques that are tried and tested, and validated by medical boards from around the world.

“I started doing this as a side project. But every month I spoke to over hundreds of people wanting to understand more about their mental well-being. So, I decided to take the plunge and do this full time,” he says. PTI JR JR ROH