While Nuhash Humayun’s Pett Kata Shaw reimagines the folktales and folk horror of Bengal that as dinghy run through the cultural veins of the nation, its sequel, Dui Shaw, is a readjustment of its sails to explore modern-day horror and its ramifications. By modern-day horror, I mean horror that is rooted in the lived experience of the citizens of the modern state. There are four stories in this mini-anthology that sheds light on the four avenues for horror to spread its tentacles.
Spoilers Ahead
Where does it all start?
We meet four young men sitting idly at a local paan shop. Two of them are salivating with their desire to own what has caught their eyes—a young woman and a superbike. A fifth arrives and doles out wads of cash in white envelopes. We quickly anticipate the direction it is going to take. Wearing cheap plastic animal masks and brandishing bamboo rods and cricket bats, the five take off. They sneak into a dark ‘party office,’ ransack it, and set it ablaze. The news spreads about the Jatrabari fire. The number of casualties, including women and children, quickly escalates.
The men go about their lives, pretending nothing has happened. One of them, Altaf, who we remember as the creepy one after a young woman, is relaxing on his bed in the mess room that he shares with the fifth guy. The fifth guy, Raju, asks Altaf to turn down the loud music as it is almost time for “azaan.” When Raju steps outside for a smoke, Altaf is left alone. Altaf senses somebody’s presence outside his room but thinks it is Raju. As Altaf gets busy doom scrolling, we see the dark silhouette of a woman trailing along the doorway. Altaf gets startled when a bony hand latches onto the doorframe. What he sees next sends a chill down his spine—a woman with all her hair thrown forward in a way that blocks her face. The very position she is in is eerie; she is squatting and making her way inside the room. However, the woman seems to be fully aware of Altaf’s position. The woman pushes her hair back, and Altaf instantly recognizes her. It is the same woman from the “phuchka” stall, the one who he was ogling at. The woman does not speak, nor does she make too many movements. She just blinks and sits right there, looking at Altaf blankly. Seeing this as an opportunity to pounce on her, Altaf proceeds and extends two of his fingers to touch her lips. The frame cuts to black with a buzzing sound akin to an electrical short circuit. The next morning, the other guys find Altaf stuck to the switchboard with his two fingers inside the socket. His flesh is all charred and melted. When interrogated, the friends tell the police that Altaf died during the fajr, or the last part of the namaz. The police rule it a suicide. The friends assume that Altaf has chosen to die, unable to bear the brunt of their misdeed.
How is Jahangir made to face his sins?
The friends break the news of Altaf’s death to their other partner, Jahangir. Jahangir is the only one who does not live in the shared mess house. The news of Altaf’s death unsettles Jahangir, but he remains silent. His mother lays out a scrumptious lunch spread that has meat, rice, and fish. The news on the television recounts the horror of the fire, so Jahangir switches it off. Jahangir confesses his crime to his mother. Quickly after this confession the audience has a sense of foreboding that all might not be normal with Jahangir’s mother. The woman recounts the story of a businessman who dealt with black money. To absolve himself of all his crimes, he planned to embark on a pilgrimage to Mecca, the Hajj. However, upon his arrival at the site, when he turned around to take a look, he found all the pilgrims preparing to stone him to death. Jahangir’s mother believes that the guilty mind of the man, unable to come to terms with his sin, had imagined all this. The woman’s words invite unwavering attention. She says that some crimes cannot be accounted for in the perpetrator’s present lifetime; their punishment is reserved for the afterlife. However, the weight of some other crimes is so heavy that the punishment digs itself out of the grave. Visually this entire conversation is also imbued with meaning. We see a fly buzzing around the mother just after Jahangir confesses to his crime. It is helpful to take note of this visual detail so that we can return to it later.
Suddenly, Jahangir gets a call from his partners. He disconnects the call and promises to call back after he has had lunch with his mother. The men, on the other side of the phone, are left puzzled as Jahangir’s mother has long been dead.
As he takes a bite of the meat curry, Jahangir hurts his teeth. The meat has turned into stone, a prescribed punishment and an advance intimation of all that is about to follow. He also notices that their window is broken. The fish is full of too many bones, which turn out to be glass shards. The mother, at this point, turns into her original self—a dead body. She is pale, with decomposed skin and cotton balls stuck up to her nostrils. She eerily begins serving the food on his plate. She says that she digged herself out of her grave and flew inside the room by breaking the window so that she could feed his son. We can now make sense of the fly buzzing around the mother. It was a hint for us to realize that what we see as the mother might be a rotten dead body. The white rice in the utensil has suddenly turned into countless pieces of stones in white. The dead woman force-feeds her son. In the end, the stones and the glass shards burst out of Jahangir’s throat, and he dies. He dies during the zuhr, the prayer offered at noon.
What is the pattern that the deaths follow?
The next one dies in quick succession. Before dying, Jashim realizes that the punishments for their sins have been reserved to be doled out at the five salah ‘waqts,’ the daily prayer time for Muslims, of the day. With Altaf and Raju gone during fajr and zuhr, respectively, the remaining three would die during the asr, maghrib, and isha. Kaysar is always high-strung and rebukes them for conjuring up these stories. Raju and Jashim realize their mistakes but also realize that there is nothing to do now apart from accepting their fate. Jashim reminds them that they have been chosen as living examples of the fate that is meted out to people who follow the Shaitan or Satan. Jashim falls off a building during the asr.
After Jashim’s death, the two survivors end up at a spiritual man’s house. Kaysar tries to persuade the man to believe that they were under the influence of evil. The man advises them to ask for repentance and turn themselves in to the police. Kaysar and Raju realize that the curse is activated right at the time of azaan. This is the time when the evil is forced to leave. When Kaysar asks why a good Muslim should be made to suffer during the azaan, the huzoor bites his arm. However, it is just all in Kaysar’s head The truth of the incident is quite grisly. We realize that it is Kaysar who is biting his own arm. This is a reminder that the second-to-last part of the day, the maghrib, has started. Kaysar runs out of the huzur’s house and climbs down the steps to find the superbike that he desired on the night of the crime. Without realizing that the bike is a mirage, he picks up the actual object, a handheld circular saw. When he starts the bike, he is actually starting the saw. He drives the activated device through his head and dies.
Do the men manage to renounce their inner evil?
Raju, being the last one to face death, tries to avert it smartly. He bribes a man to rent out his recording studio for the entire duration of Isha, the last prayer of the day. The soundproof walls of the studio make it a safe sanctuary for Raju. Right when the prayer is about to begin, a kid shows up offering him tea. Upon seeing Raju’s bewildered state, the studio owner asks the boy to leave. However, Raju, now too paranoid, locks him in, lest the sound of the prayer drift through the door and reach his ears. Shortly after the isha time begins, the boy falls to the floor and has an epileptic fit. The kid, now under a spell, starts reciting the namaaz. The namaz invites Raju’s dead friends, who barge in through the foam walls of the studio. They all appear wearing animal masks, as they did before the Jatrabari incident. Kaysar smashes Raju’s head against the console. In reality, it is Raju who has been compelled to smash his own head.
‘Waqt’ Depicts The Men As Frankenstein’s Monster
Waqt bears a special meaning when it is underlined for its metaphorical implications. It is laden with elements of Islamic horror, which, when closely examined, reflect the socio-political state of not only the Indian subcontinent but the world at large. The men descend into the blindingly dark depths of crime. Their punishment is to be read as a cautionary tale. The men are propelled by forces far bigger than them. While the narrative of the Islamic horror points towards Satan or “Shaitaan” as the driving force, we cannot help but notice that the five men are Frankenstein’s monsters—the Frankenstein here being the ruling class or the ruling state.
It does not take too much to realize that the men in Waqt have a hard time making ends meet. So, the world of crime and the easy money that it generates is a lucrative business for them. The ruling class creates and disciplines such men like its minion army. However, the loyalty formed is unquestionably one-sided. While the men have to be at the disposal of the higher rung, the latter is not obliged to enter into any such pact. Without any light of emancipation in sight, day after day, generations of humanity are pushed, or rather funded, to become criminals and fundamentalists. It is fundamentalism that argues against public welfare and for oppression.
All over the world, the fires of destruction are fomented by religious groups who work hand in glove with the conservative elite and the state. With the root of religion and its close proximity to the working class slowly disintegrating, these working classes are forced to acknowledge a newer dimension to the institution of religion as imposed by the cabal of cronies. Religious faith unifies the working class, but religious fundamentalism destroys them.
