I was recently on a red-eye flight from Ahmedabad to Delhi, and had been reading the novel World War Z. When I landed and went to grab my suitcase from the baggage belt, there was practically no one amidst the 10-odd belts, in the vast expanse of the hall. I noticed some motion out of the corner of my drooping eyelids, and saw a rolling billboard on top of one of the farthest belts, the ones where the backlit reel keeps whirring and covers maximum-viewership-minimum-space.
Some model’s face was advertising some or the other skin cream while flitting past my vision. I looked around and saw some stragglers walking up to where I was. No one was looking at the poster. I looked back at the ad, and saw one of the tube-lights flickering, giving the model’s face an uneasy tan. Suddenly I was gripped with a strange sense of despair and fear; I was unable to process the continued movement of the billboard even when there was no one in the vicinity to give two cents about it. I looked around at my fellow passengers with a barely concealed frown.
Maybe it was the lack of sleep and/or the effect of the book (which gives narrative accounts of the zombie apocalypse in an excruciatingly realistic way) but I started to understand that what makes a horror film ‘horrific’ for me, is not the gore or action or any supernatural element; it’s the emptiness left in the wake of human absence – like the opening scene of 28 Days Later where the streets of London are utterly deserted. More than that, it’s the fear that if and when we are gone, our creations might still be performing their intended functions, but with no one to pay any heed or give any directions.
As I was thinking about all this, I realised that the murmurs around me had stopped. I looked around to see that the last of the passengers had left. I shuddered involuntarily, glanced once at the rolling billboard, and walked away at a brisk pace.
Mind Palace? More like Mind Barsati. 