First Published Oct 27, 2019 in Mumbai Mirror.
Spontaneous fires, banshees and ghost riders – discover the most haunted places in India, this Halloween.
അമ്മ പറഞ്ഞു തന്ന കഥകളിലൂടെ സ്വപ്നങ്ങള് കണ്ടിരുന്ന കാലം. ആ യാത്രകള്ക്കൊടുവില് എഴുത്തുകാരന് എന്ന പേരു കൂടി ഒപ്പം കൂട്ടിയിരിക്കുന്നു ഈ ചെറുപ്പക്കാരന്. ആഗ്രഹം അത്രമേല് ശക്തമാണെങ്കില് സ്വപ്നങ്ങളൊക്കെ കൈക്കുമ്പിളിലേക്ക് എത്തിക്കാമെന്നു തെളിയിച്ചിരിക്കുന്നു തൃശൂര് ഇരിങ്ങാലക്കുടക്കാരന് കെ ഹരികുമാര്.
Interview originally printed in Deccan Chronicle in June 2013.
Wannabe writers might want to try travelling in trains when they feel creative. Back in 1990 J. K. Rowling was on a train to London when the idea for Harry Potter just “fell into her head”. Twenty years later, K. Hari Kumar wrote his first novel on a train in Delhi.
Inspiration comes from all quarters; films, folktales and even cartoons. I have read stories from Chandamama, and ghost stories of Charles Dickens, Satyajit Ray and Ruskin Bond. Pet Sematary was the full-fledged horror novel that made a deep impact in my mind. The Butcher’s Theater by Jonathan Kellerman made me realise that every horror story does not have a supernatural entity. This served as an inspiration for my book, That Frequent Visitor (2015).
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.
