So many stories to still discover…

I read about The Decievers in the news paper which was listing the hollywood movies on India and it caught my attention as I had neither heard of the movie nor anything about it. It led to me downloading it impromptu and I saw it last night and I was amazed that something that was so rampant in colonial India never reached my ears or knowledge. When I mentioned to my mom that she should watch the movie as she is a sucker for thrillers and suspense movies I was in for a shock that she knew about the movement of the Thuggee’s (she called them Phansigars) { Phansi you get it now do you }. The other fact that I didn’t know about is that several books document the movement of these Thuggees. Infact they almost had a cult status where people would wait for a Thuggee to include them in their gang!!!!

A still from the movie The Deceivers ! The Thuggee’s used the ‘Rumal’ (handkerchief) to strangle their victims to death. A noiseless fast death beckoned the wanderer’s in colonial India…. It must have been really eerie to travel back then !!!!

The Thuggee’s were first documented in the 14th century and whilst there are many contrasting statistics the most popular estimate is by Guiness Book of World Records which says they killed almost 20,00,000 people !!!! Yes that many and I didn’t even hear anything about them in the past 34 years of my life. I have read many stories in Amar Chitra Katha where travellers are robbed by thugs on the way after the thugs have be-friended them and joined them as co-travellers and yet I didn’t know it was all coming from here !

There is a lot of research on them on Wiki and the Thuggee’s infact I was intrigued on reading their ideology that they actually thought or were led to believe…

From Wiki :

Thuggee viewpoint

Thuggee trace their origin to the battle of Kali against Raktabija; however, their foundation myth departs from Brahminical versions of the Puranas. Thuggee consider themselves to be children of Kali, created out of her sweat. This is similar to the way Kali was created from aggression and willingness to fight for Durga.^[18]

According to some sources, especially old colonial sources, Thuggee believe they have a positive role, saving humans’ lives. Without Thuggee’s sacred service, Kali might destroy all the human kind:

• “It is God who kills, but Bhowanee (Kali) has name for it.”
• “God is all in all, for good and evil.”
• “God has appointed blood for her (Bhowanee) food, saying ‘khoon tu kao’, feed thou upon blood. In my opinion it is very bad, but what she can do, being ordered to subsist upon blood!”
• “Bhowanee is happy and more so in proportion to the blood that is shed.”

So many amazing stories do remain to discover and I seriously feel life is short. Another interesting movie I watched in the last week was “Shanghai”  based on a novel Z by Vassilis Vassilikos. It is quite eerie that a movie about the Chaos in India is made on the basis of a novel written in 1967 in Greece and yet it seems so very relevant. I guess though I must make comparisons only after reading the book as Rakesh said !

Seriously the world is a hell of an interesting place

 

Pic Courtesy : Google Images