New Delhi: 45 years ago, a film was made by six National Award-winning directors, Aruna Raje, that was based on black magic. The film, written by Vijay Tendulkar, narrates the experience of a family with black magic. Released in 1980, it wasn’t a massive box office success upon its initial release, but it gained a strong following over time.
While writing this film, the director met some tantriks, who warned her not to get involved in black magic. But she made this film, after which her life became worse. Can you guess the film?
We are talking about Gehrayee, the film that features Padmini Kolhapure, Shreeram Lagoo, Anant Nag, Amrish Puri and Indrani Mukherjee in pivotal roles.
In an interview given to Bollywood Crypt, Aruna Raje said that the idea of Gehrayee came to her from a personal experience. ‘When I lived with my family in Bangalore, my mother used to look for something in the garden every day. Small lemons smeared with turmeric or kumkum. People used to practice black magic.’
She further said, ‘When I got a chance to make something, I thought, ‘Why not make something on black magic?’ And then we started research. The interesting thing is that Vijay Tendulkar was with us on this script. So, three of us were writing the script. We interviewed many people. We have very interesting stories. Then we met a girl who was possessed by a strange ghost. The one who was possessed was a Christian. But the one who was possessed by the ghost was a Muslim girl from Lucknow. We were surprised that when the girl was possessed by the ghost, she started speaking Urdu. She used to recite Shayari. This story seemed inspiring.’ For the unversed, this girl’s role inspired Padmini Kolhapure’s role in Gehrayee.
Aruna Raje said that while writing the story, she met tantriks and black magicians. ‘One important thing is that we should not do these things on our own. That is because we do not know the result. Everyone warned us not to make this film. Incidents will happen to you. We were not superstitious, so we thought that we were only making a film. We made the film. But things went wrong.’
Aruna Raje said that a few years after Gehrayee was released, she got divorced from her husband and her daughter died of cancer at the age of 9. Not only this, immediately after the release, the audience started complaining to her that strange and scary things were happening to them.
