Many of my readers would have
seen the movie “Saw”. Made by a director fresh out of film school, financed on
a shoestring by a never heard of production company, with no stars to speak of.
For the uninitiated, the movie starts with 2 strangers waking up inside a dirty
public toilet, chained to posts in remote corners, with a bloody corpse lying
in the centre of the room. Neither has any idea how they got here. An
audiotaped voice tells them they have been brought as part of a horrific
experiment, and the only way either may escape is by following a series of
clues. A reign of pure terror follows. The viewer is subjected to a series of
violent acts as the story unfolds, sheer horror of the human kind with nary a
ghost in sight. The massive violence and gore is a put off for many, but the
attentive viewers realize it’s all there to take the story forward. The
unbelievable ending is the icing on the cake. Days, weeks after watching the
movie, the scenes creep up inside you, and you’re reminded that the greatest of
all evil a man can face is the darkness that lies inside him.
In one sentence, Arnab Ray’s
“The Mine” is the book equivalent of Saw. Sheer psychological horror packaged
in a tight story with some memorable and diverse characters.
The synopsis first, borrowed
directly from the book.
QUOTE
“At a secret mining facility somewhere in the
deserts of Rajasthan, an ancient place of worship with disturbing carvings on
its dome, is discovered buried deep inside the earth. Soon the miners find
themselves in the grip of terrifying waking nightmares. One tries to mutilate himself. Worse follows.
Five experts are called in to
investigate these strange occurrences. Sucked into a nightmare deep
underground, they embark on a perilous journey; a journey that will change them
forever, bringing them face to face with the most shattering truth of them
all….
THE GREATEST EVIL LIES DEEP
INSIDE.
UNQUOTE
Followers of Ray’s blog
(greatbong.net) know him as an intelligent writer, well read with the right
dose of twisted humour. His first book “May I hebb your attention pliss” was a
satire on contemporary social issues, a magnification of the tone of his blog
in many ways. But in “The Mine”, Ray re-invents himself as a brilliant
story-teller, using intelligent techniques to keep the reader engrossed.
What techniques? Firstly, the
pace of horror is unrelenting. From the prologue to the last page, the reader’s
mind is jolted by continual events of gruesome proportions. Sometimes
flashback, sometimes dream sequences, everything adding up to move the story
forward. I never got to breathe easy while reading The Mine. Every page I
turned subjected me to another dose of horror. And it’s all psychological, all
to do with humans. There are no ghosts, except ones that reside inside humans.
Second, the sheer scope of the
story. Ray touches on a little bit of everything that represents horror to the
average human mind – mythology, wall signs with ominous messages, historical
references of (often sexual) torture, the Nazi holocaust and its ill effects,
scientific experiments gone wrong, and of course, characters with twisted
backgrounds. Normally a novel which tries to achieve so much falls flat on its
face, as the writer usually lacks knowledge of these references and ends up
making a mockery of them. But Ray’s knowledge of each event, and how he manages
to link them to the core story, is commendable. The aforesaid pace of the story
helps too.
Third, the characterization. 5
characters comprise the core story, but everyone else plays a key role. There
are no nice guys in The Mine. Everyone has shades of grey, and you learn more
about just how twisted everyone is as the story goes on. Not your average ghost
story with a cross-wielding Christian priest symbolizing God and everything
good in this world.
And that brings me to the best
facet of The Mine. It is ALL evil. Good does NOT triumph in the end! In fact, no
one represents the good side at all. A welcome break from traditional good and
evil stories (where aforesaid cross-wielding priest and the house he represents
always win in the end).
Gore? Of course there’s gore,
plenty of it. Add to it a few scenes of graphic sex, which come in to heighten
the uneasiness. Another person who read The Mine before I did told me she was
put off by the “violence”. Sounded suspiciously like how a lot of friends had
described Saw. And when I finished reading The Mine, I was right.
But come on, that’s the point
of psychological horror. When you put a set of twisted people into even more
twisted settings, they don’t hold hands and dance around. The writer probably
thought any attempt to ease the pace in a story like this would have dulled the
narrative, and I’m with him here. If you read The Mine like your average
thriller, you come out sick of the “violence”, and probably don’t finish the
book. If you pay attention, visualizing each scene as it is narrated; you come
out with a disturbed mind and a fluttering heart after finishing the book. That,
really is the triumph of psychological horror.
In summary, The Mine is really
a commendable effort from Arnab Ray. If you’re expecting a relaxing Sunday
read, avoid the book on all counts. If you’re expecting happy endings, I
wouldn’t suggest The Mine either. But if enjoy the genre of psychological
horror, enjoy gore till it knots your stomach and don’t mind your brain getting
a little screwed at the end, The Mine is just the book. 4 out of 5 stars on my
scale.
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