Of Greed and the Undead Past: Rahi Anil Barve’s Tumbbad as an Exercise in Toxic Nostalgia

Indian cultural texts—be it literature or films—are more often than not informed by the past that India has seen down the ages of history. One such juncture was the colonial era of rule by the British, which, apart from the repression and regression it occasioned, literally tore the country apart with the Partition of India into India and Pakistan. The horrendous time span that India spent under the colonial thumb of the British Raj is etched so profoundly in the cultural mnemonics of the country, that her texts are often punctuated with references to that collective memory of trauma. This chapter will pan on Tumbbad, an Indian/Swedish Hindi-language period horror film by Rahi Anil Barve that came out as late as 2018, yet the film is set in the colonial backdrop of India, where a macabre story of greed and lust plays out with horrific consequences. The film takes up a mythopoeic stance and weaves spine chilling horror around it.