100 Days, Zero Sleep

The First Hundred Days

It is that season again: the government's first hundred days. Every newspaper and news channel is busy with the report card, analysing what the government has done, undone, not done, half done, got done and dan-dana-done.

But for me, when the words hundred and days come together, there is no report card. There is only horror. Real horror. The horror of a movie called 100 Days.

A Very Important Phone Call

It all began with a phone call to my friend. He lived just a couple of blocks from my house, and I had seen him barely an hour earlier on the football field, where we had held a serious discussion on Brazil, Germany and Argentina and their World Cup fortunes.

As usual, in all that serious discussion, trivial topics like tomorrow's homework got missed. Hence the call. Its agenda was simple.

Phone call agenda

Which homework have we not done?
Which of it will get us into trouble?
~~Brazil vs Germany vs Argentina~~ (done)

Towards the end of the call, my friend announced that the movie 100 Days had just started on cable. Then he asked, “Which movie is on at your house?”

Really? We lived two blocks apart. We had the same cable wala, the same wire, possibly the same knot in the wire. And yet he had the audacity to ask what was playing at my end.

I gave the only answer the question deserved: “Same movie. Same channel. Same cable wala.”

Dusk over a Pune housing colony: a cable wala on a rooftop ladder adjusts a tangle of black wires strung between two buildings, and through two lit windows a boy on each side holds a phone while the same suspense scene glows on identical TVs. A thin crescent moon hangs in the sky. — **Cable Wala's Twilight TV Colony** · same wire, same knot, same movie

Not a Ghost in Sight

100 Days was supposed to be a horror movie, so I was expecting ghosts and all. It turned out to be a suspense thriller instead, with an extraordinary background score and a very slow build-up to the suspense.

No ghosts. Something far worse: suspense, with music.

And it was the music that truly haunted me. Not the skeleton, not the murderer, not the visions. The music. It crept in before anything happened on screen. A few slow notes told you something terrible was coming, without telling you when. And then they just sat there, making you wait.

The picture could be a woman pouring tea, and the music would make it feel like a crime scene. You could close your eyes to escape the screen, but you couldn't close your ears.

Credit where it's due: the music was by Raamlaxman. They owe me one night's sleep.

A dim bedroom at 3 a.m.: a boy peeks over his blanket at the plastered wall, where a faint skeleton outline seems to show through the plaster, while dark musical notes drift across the room like smoke and an old TV glows blue in the corner. — **Midnight TV and the Wall Skeleton** · the walls were three inches thick. I checked each one.

The Morning After

The next day I met my friend at school. We were classmates and bench mates. He looked at me and said, “I don't know why the movie was called 100 Days. What is the logic of it?”

I looked at him. There were bags under his eyes. His shoulders had dropped. He looked like he had just climbed Everest, without oxygen.

“You didn't sleep last night, did you?” I asked.

How did I know? Because I was wearing the same face. I had spent the night staring at the walls of our house, all three inches thick, checking each one for a skeleton. Every time I closed my eyes, the movie started again, so I stopped closing them. By morning I had the bags, the shoulders and the full Everest expedition look, and here was my friend wearing the matching set.

“You also didn't sleep,” he said. “What a horror movie!”

Har Ek Friend

Our conversation was interrupted by the arrival of our third bench partner. (Yes, three people sat on one bench and wrote in their notebooks, pushing and shoving each other's shoulders for elbow room.)

“Yaar,” he said, “today our cable wala is showing 100 Days at night.”

We looked at him and said in unison, “We saw it yesterday.” One point to us.

Then we did what true friends do. “You must watch it,” we said. “Brilliant movie. Ek number. Must watch.”

We had barely survived the previous night. Naturally, we wanted company.

A sunlit 1990s classroom: three boys squeezed onto one wooden bench. The two on the left, with dark circles under their eyes and little red devil horns, give a cheerful thumbs-up to the bright-eyed third boy, who listens eagerly. A skeleton and a ghost are chalked on the blackboard behind them. — **Mischief at the Back-Bench Classroom** · two recommendations, one victim

“Har ek friend kamina hota hai.”Years later, a Hindi film song captured exactly this behaviour.

The next day there were three of us on that bench, all with bags under our eyes, all saying the same thing: “Yaar, there is no logic to the name 100 Days. The movie doesn't happen in a hundred days. Nothing in it justifies the title.”

Report card

The morning after
Back bench

Subject	Marks
Hours of sleep	0 / 8
Friends warned	0
Friends recommended the movie	1
Logic found in the title	0
Homework done	see call agenda

The Magic Sleep Medicine

What happened next? I woke up in the middle of the night and shouted at the top of my voice, “Mummy! Papa! Where are you?”

That earned me a visit to our family doctor, who prescribed a magic sleep medicine. Apparently it was paracetamol in disguise. It worked perfectly.

Split scene. Left, at night: a boy sits up in bed shouting while his mother rushes in with a glass of milk and his father follows with a torch, under a 'No Horror' sign. Right, next day: a kindly old family doctor with a stethoscope holds up a tiny sparkling white tablet as the boy and his mother look on. — **From Bedtime Fright to Doctor's Advice** · paracetamol, in disguise

It also earned me a ban on watching horror movies at home.

I don't know what happened to my friends. We never discussed it. Never discuss your fears in class: that is the unwritten motto at Crescent.

The Afternoon Protocol

Did that stop me from watching horror movies? No. Curiosity kills the cat, but the cat does not stop being curious.

The only difference was that I was better prepared the next time. When I watched Kafan (starring Dimple Kapadia, or an actress who looked a lot like her), I followed a strict protocol.

Bright afternoon outside a Pune house with every door and window thrown open; a small TV glows deep inside the hallway. A schoolboy peeks at it from behind the gatepost far down the lane, while chalk lines on the ground mark 'safe distance, 25 metres' and amused neighbours watch from a balcony. — **Safe Distance on a Sunlit Street** · 25 metres, measured in chalk

And I did manage to watch the whole movie. The tradition stayed alive: watching horror movies in fear, and watching them anyway.

Twenty Years Later

The latest one to really scare me was The Conjuring. Again a slow, steady build-up of suspense, equally extraordinary background music, and an unhurried pace.

It was similar to 100 Days in one more way. After the movie, our discussion focused on an equally illogical thing: “Why was the doll Annabelle shown in the movie? What is the logic of the doll?”

Some questions never change. Only the bench does.

As for 100 Days, it took me a while to watch it again. Twenty years, to be precise. That is how long it took to muster the courage.

A cosy living room at night with every lamp on: a grown man in pyjamas sits wide-eyed on the sofa hugging a cushion, and beside him his eleven-year-old self in school uniform hugs a pillow with the same expression. A porcelain doll watches from the shelf. — **Nostalgic Movie Night on the Sofa** · twenty years older, same cushion grip

And yes, it was just as terrifying. I knew the suspense by heart. It has been etched in my brain since that night. The moment those first notes of the background score started, I was eleven again, lying awake, staring at a three-inch wall.

The story I had outgrown.
The music, never.

This time, though, I watched with my eyes open instead of through my fingers. And there it was, the answer to the great bench-mate debate: a video cassette in the film, labelled 100 Days. That's it. That's the logic. Three boys lost a night's sleep, and the title was a sticker on a tape.

Close-up of a worn black VHS cassette on a wooden table with a handwritten label reading '100 Days'; behind it an old TV shows a pair of frightened eyes, and musical notes drift past a boy watching from the sofa. — **The Logic, at Last** · it was a sticker on a tape

Later, I read that the film traces its roots to an Italian thriller called Seven Notes in Black.

Of course it does. Even its family tree is made of music.

— Vinaay Patil

The Logic Committee

Minutes of meeting · three members, one bench

Film	Question raised	Answer found
100 Days	Why is it called 100 Days?	A sticker on a video cassette (found 20 years later)
The Conjuring	Why is the doll there?	Still pending

Meeting adjourned · nobody slept

Days Under the Crescent Sun

Stories from school days and a 1990s Pune childhood: plans that were too clever, teachers who were never questioned, and the people who made it all bearable.