Munjya is the most wildly entertaining ghost I have encountered at the movies recently.
But he has the added advantage of being a Maharashtrian ghost, of possessing rhythms of speech and behaviour that are distinctly Maharashtrian, of being blessed with that beautiful brand of Maharashtrian irritability, points out Sreehari Nair.
Munjya is both a shape-shifter and a body snatcher.
Given his peculiar interests, it helps that Munjya is gelatinous in texture.
He is also emphatically vulgar, and is often only a syllable away from uttering the choicest Marathi cusswords.
A troublemaker of devious proportions, he has a visible enthusiasm for breaking and smashing things up.
But despite your best efforts, you can't pin him down -- he's just too fidgety.
This fidgetiness bespeaks bad karma; for Munjya was once Gotya, a little Konkani boy on the make, forever twisting and turning in a bid to soften the sting of his mother's cane.
More dangerous than an imp and far less adorable than a scallywag, Gotya was the sort of boy who could make grownups sick just to watch him in thought, the sort of evil child who could inspire mass sterilisation drives.
Though his flirtations with black magic were carried out in deep secrecy, his plotting disingenuous eyes made his projects all too clear. Ergo, when he was killed by the power of his own dark force, even his parents had trouble shedding tears for him.
So Gotya returns as Munjya, purposeful and raucous, not as a ghost out to correct historical blunders but as a mischievous tree spirit intent on having his way, with the girl of his choice.
The theme of his return also ties in with his past, since Munjya (née Gotya) had connubial feelings at an age when kids are typically occupied with marbles and spinning tops.
And now, as the bursting-at-the-seams spirit, he demands his long-impending marriage, cries out 'Lagin, Lagin,' as if it were the overtones of a Tibetan chant gone foul.
Munjya is the most wildly entertaining ghost I have encountered at the movies recently. But he has the added advantage of being a Maharashtrian ghost, of possessing rhythms of speech and behaviour that are distinctly Maharashtrian, of being blessed with that beautiful brand of Maharashtrian irritability.
When he learns that the love of his life can no longer lay claim to being a dainty pigtailed beauty, our ghost is so vexed that he lets out a grunt and wishes her away, much like some Joshi kaka sending back Crab Sukka on Ekadashi.
Munjya is largely preverbal (a boy, mind you, he's a mere boy), and this trait is at odds with his raging obsession. His plans for marriage waylaid by nature, he howls with anguish; but just as quickly he regains his twitchy energy and doubles down on his ambitions.
No, this is no hashtag ghost content with promoting this or that social cause; he's a lot more colourful, and he recalls a tradition of mythical freaks who have weathered ages, fashions, revolutions.
In his ability to keep going despite failures, Munjya is closer to such fabulous monsters as Chamataka and Doob Doob, themselves spiritual successors of Karataka and Damanaka, those vile, vile jackals who give the Panchatantra its anarchic shine.
While hashtag movements seek to boil complex issues down to a statement or a message, great myths strive to do complete musical justice to even the nastiest human feeling.
This is why myths tend to have a whole range of meanings and associations, and why they affect us at a deeper level than we can possibly express in words.
With equal felicity, Munjya turns lamp posts into shards and rivals into castrated no-goods, and his actions leave you terrorised yet elated. He makes you laugh at your own childish responses, which may be a surefire sign that you are being corrupted with pleasure.
As I watched him wreak delightful havoc on the screen, I prayed that he would keep finding ways to refine his kvetching, and I wished all ghosts were as viciously funny as Munjya.
You can't tell why his antics work -- if you could, they wouldn't be so bewitching.
The gravelly voice seems to scratch his throat, as he elicits from us a combination of complicity and nervous glee: silently, we applaud his daemonic will; shamefacedly, we chuckle at his negative splendor.
The Maharashtrian setting, in which Munjya's crotchetiness and irascible personality seem completely at home, is crucial to the story's humour in more ways than you can account for.
Those sprinklings of Makad-Tondya and Bin-Dok and Sardya -- profanities of the gut -- are all the more charming if you let them work on you without subtitles. When little Gotya talks about black magic needing Dirgha Abhyas, the phrase hits you with the speed and mystery of a Kishkas in a Philip Roth novel.
But there's more.
By and by you realise that the entire cast of Maharashtrian characters who surround the ghost are part of the story's 'homegrown surreal' tone.
The delusions of these characters add to the blossoming chaos rather than detract from it. In their frustrations and overflowing passions, they themselves become great comic types -- shaking their fists injudiciously or wrinkling their noses.
Even the superstitious ones are bucktoothed beauties blessed with moles the size of betel-nuts.
Though they all speak in Hindi, their inflections, or better yet, their bile and their spit, are unmistakably Maharashtrian.
This is a stirrer of a ghost, yes, and for his excesses to land smoothly the world around him had to be seasoned just right. And that is exactly what you get in this tale of well-calculated wild swings.
Every jaundiced remark that Munjya makes and every anatomical joke he cracks is rescued by that touch of 'tartness' and 'naughtiness' -- what we children of the Sahyadris call Ambat and Chavat.
And sure, there are other West-of-Deccan seasonings that liven up the proceedings: sentimental hokum; unexpected sincerity; practical thinking in the face of grand drama; a fussy concern for the nuances of language, even while you are hanging by a cliff at the brink of doom.
When Gotya, that pint-sized tryant, gets ready to sacrifice his sister, he puts a razor blade to her neck, yelling, 'Narbali!'
And the horrified freckled girl, trembling like a damp sparrow, finds the presence of mind to say, 'But I am a Naari.'
Stunned for a moment or two, Gotya snaps back, 'Even Naari would do.'
This mix of bravado and desperation is a defining feature of Gotya, and it becomes more pronounced in his incarnation as Munjya, the one-two punch serving as a key ingredient of his complex dimensions.
Munjya arrives at a period in our cinematic history when the supernatural is being slowly defanged, its feral edge traded for marketable moralism.
The transgender ghost in Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 was conceived as if sexual ambiguity had purified him and driven out earthly faults; femaleness did the same for the leading ghost in the Stree franchise.
These are 'corporate creations' that smell of the boardroom and the walnut conference table, of whiteboards and scented markers and trend charts.
In this climate of risk-free ghosts, Munjya strikes you as nothing less than a renegade. His savagery isn't aimed at redressing wrongs or peddling messages of inclusiveness. He shocks, he confounds, he amuses. In him there's a dash of pop as well as a distillation of our basest passions -- jealousy, desire, thwarted ambitions -- all rendered with a regional specificity that can only be linked to the personal mania of his creators.
The garden of modern horror comedy has become too sanitised and too well-preened to inspire wonder.
Munjya invades it, like a dogged child reclaiming his playground.
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