Halloween Playlist

To call Indian Cinema Bollywood would be a disservice. This moniker leaves behind an implicit misunderstanding it is a knock-off of western Hollywood.

While there is interest, curiosity, and entertainment in Hollywood cinema all over the world, there's need to "see people like me" in cinema. Why, even American cinema is not all Hollywood. Labels cripple creativity.

Interest in Indian cinema spans across several countries and continents. It provides movies that satisfy every taste. Sometimes it is the equivalent of the modern-day circus while workers toil for their bread. It can provide masala or spice to a single movie offering everything, action, suspense, drama, romance, thrills. Verily, it is the escape for the common man in his darkened, air-conditioned bubble called the movie theater. Then, there are the off-beat movies, the art movies, the horror, the musicals, the romantic, the tragedy, the comedy, the tragicomedy. There's even room for the pretentious.

Into legends, myths, religion, or spirituality? Fear not, there's a plethora of choices. Do not want the original because the characters don't look like you? Knockoffs are available as well. They're adjusted for the Indian setting and mindset. Just name it, and you have it. When one considers multiple Indian languages and dialects, the mix is endless!

Indian cinema is a rich treasure trove. We've left behind footprints from silent films, celluloid, reel, to digital.

Music plays a huge role in Indian films. It conveys the mood most effectively.

From the land that provided treatises in every subject including love in a thorough scientific manner, the Indian censor board has had a love fest with the scissors. Lip to lip kissing was verboten for decades. Hence, the song and dance, with the hero and heroine running around trees while singing love songs became part of the ethos. Pawing and suggestive gyrations went over the censor radar, because the filmmakers omit the dreaded kiss. Instead, they tactfully would lead the audience to imagine a passionate lip lock by obscuring the act. A tree trunk would serve the purpose well for the cameraperson to focus on.

I always wonder what the hero and heroine would do behind the tree until the director yells, "Cut!" Now of course, they can whip out a smart watch and look at notifications while caressing each other behind the tree.

Music provided and continues to provide the extra heft to different emotions and stories. There is a huge selection for every nuanced mood.

For this challenge of providing a Halloween playlist, it is going to be a difficult task to cull through the horror genre. There are too many to select. I'll whittle down with a few selections. I will also restrict myself to Hindi cinema. There are way too many languages to pick from. Finally, I will pick a recurring theme in the genre. Otherwise, I'd have to write a textbook that will need regular refreshing.

There are some favorite ideas and props in the horror genre. Reincarnation is a favorite that has not lost appeal.

A haunted mansion or haveli, hanging chandelier lit with glowing lamps, whistling wind, billowing curtains, thunder, lightning, and haunting music with a woman in white weaving through a thickly forested area are staple ingredients for a suspense filled movie.

Madhumati movie was one huge success with star power, great music, dance, and a story of intrigue, murder, unrequited love in one generation, while the problems are all retraced, sleuthed, and solved in the next.

Here's a song where the mysterious woman welcomes the hero from another land she has waited for a long time. How long? Just a couple of generations.

The following decades brought forth a slew of reincarnation themes. Some of them were hits, while others failed miserably.

An old fort is a great setting for intrigue. Royalty, lover separations, and cruel rulers with immense power to put the kibbosh on love are recurring themes.

Here's a song from the movie Mehbooba with the mysterious heroine in white reels the hero in with a beautiful song.

The first two verses roughly translated go, "My eyes shed monsoon tears, but yet my heart is thirsty."

She associates the tinkling sound of anklets as echoes of sadness in her heart. Curious, he follows wanting to know more and more about this beautiful apparition. The melodious song suggests the need to remember memories from a time gone by. As the song ends, he screams the name of this unknown beauty from a bygone era. What is their connection?

The early Eighties brought forth Karz, and it has strange resemblance to The Reincarnation of Peter Proud. It proved to be a box office success of a murder mystery solved by the reincarnated protagonist.

In this song clip, the hero in the next generation remembers being murdered in the prior life by an unscrupulous girlfriend after his money. He jogs her memory of the event where he was mowed down to death in his previous life.

Three plus decades later, the same movie was rehashed as Om Shanti Om for modern day relevance. Again. the same formula proved to be a smash hit. Here, instead of an automobile accident, the protagonist was set afire. You just have to wait out a generation to mete out just desserts. The creepy recreation of the murderous past is quite well done in this song in the next generation.

Here's a comic mostly instrumental take with Bhoot Bungala, or Haunted Bungalow. The actors in this clip comprise of talented music director R.D.Burman, ace comedian Mehmood along with some spooky, shady characters.

Enough of rehashing and reincarnating. How about schemes and scams that prey on the gullible in the most paranormal way?

This melody is a strong favorite that stands the test of time. Variations of the same, covers by different singers come and ago. The original sung by the inimitable diva Lata Mangeshkar will outlive generations.

The beautiful heroine bedecked in pearls beckons the hero in a dark, deserted setting to embrace her. The title of the film is "Woh Kaun Thi?" or Who was She?

The first two verses invite in the most plaintive manner.

"Come embrace me now, for who knows if this beautiful night will ever visit again.

Perhaps in this life, we may or may not meet again."

There are several more to play. However, now that this song is playing, I guess I will put it in an infinite loop and forget the rest of the songs.