Before I begin writing, I sit down, take a piece of paper and scribble down the story idea point by point (sequentially). Some of these points might be just one word, while others might be as long as a paragraph. I take an entire day (without breaks) to finish this outline of the story which is called ‘the skeleton’ or structure of the story.
There are songs that soothe the soul, and then there are songs that transport you to another world altogether. Ariyathe from Ravanaprabhu belongs to the latter. To those who understand Malayalam, it feels like a divine blessing—a secret doorway into the realm of poetry and music that others, sadly, may never fully comprehend. The unparalleled
Screenwriter and bestselling horror writer K. Hari Kumar finds the genre’s market marginalised and untapped despite our rich oral horror tradition. “Only few retain the taste in horror, while majority keep away because of the fear it instilled in their mind. The tendency to choose an international writer sometimes puts Indian English writers of the genre at a disadvantage. The equation changes when horror readers from regional languages switch to Indian English or our books are translated into regional languages,” he says.
Bhram is based on K Hari Kumar’s 2018 novel, The Other Side Of Her. The show is directed by Sangeeth Sivan. Kalki says she started prepping for the show by reading real-life accounts of accident survivors. “Sangeeth sent me stories of people who had gone through accidents but couldn’t recall it because of trauma. In such cases, certain sensory details would trigger them, like a smell or a piece of clothing.”
night. “They are like woollen blankets,” says author K Hari Kumar. “They keep you warm on rainy nights.” With his latest book, India’s Most Haunted: Tales of Terrifying places (HarperCollins), Mumbai-based Kumar wishes to reaffirm his place as one of India’s top horror writers. With a collection of fifty short stories, he hopes to frighten the socks off the reader by keeping it ‘simple so that everyone can understand’. “One need not tharoorify their manuscript,” he notes, setting the tone for the interview.
