EXCLUSIVE: Do folklores like Stree 2 and Munjya exist in reality? Paranormal investigator Sarbajeet Mohanty spills beans
Bollywood in the last few years has been counting on folklore like anything. Be it Tumbadd, Pari, Bulbbul, Munjya, and the hit franchise Stree. Recently, paranormal investigator Sarbajeet Mohanty sat in an exclusive conversation with Pinkvilla where he revealed whether stories as such do exist in reality or they are simply works of fiction.
“They are great folklores to work on,” Mohanty said about Munjya and Stree adding that there are a lot of stories as such. He continued, “I heard one story on Odisha that an old woman comes in the middle of the night, rings the bell, and asks for onion. If you don’t give her onion, then she will kill you, and sometimes even a call used to arrive before her knock and if you pick the call, you can hear her.”
“So back then we had a landline and whenever there was a call on it at night we used to ignore it. Later we got a solution that if there is a tulsi plant, she will not come,” Sarbajeet told Pinkvilla further admitting that when he grew up he was told that a whole narrative was created at the time when onion prices were skyrocketing – so someone might be roleplaying in order to get hands on a few onions.
Sarbajeet Mohanty in our conversation also shared that the original folklore that inspired Stree’s first part was from Bangalore. People there wrote ‘Naleba’ outside their house which meant there was no one at home so don’t disturb, come tomorrow. There was a popular assumption that someone would sound like your relative while knocking at your door and when you open, you’ll face the consequences. The Stree writers adapted it for the big screen as ‘O Stree Kal Aana’.
Watch Pinkvilla’s full interview with Sarbajeet Mohanty here:-
The paranormal investigator further shared with us an incident where some people mislead others by spreading fake folklore. Mohanty revealed that he was called to investigate a case in Odisha where people claimed that a monster used to eat cows and sheep in the night. The locals alleged that the animal’s internal organs were eaten and only the carcass was left with marks on it.
Sarbajeet detailed, “We got a call that the monster has arrived in one more village as well so we went there with our crew including a TV channel’s team. We set up our cameras at three different locations notified by the villagers. It was stretched across a three-kilometer radius. We started at 9 in the night hearing all the claims made by the locals and 7-8 hours passed by but we couldn’t see anything.”
“We wrapped up that day and the very next day we received a call that a similar incident had happened again. And I was like how did this happen and we didn’t see anything despite such a massive setup?” shared Mohanty adding that a month later there came news that the organs of those animals were being smuggled. There were a bunch of people who were killing them making it look like an animal attack and selling those parts in the black market.
According to Sarbajeet, “They just utilized one of the folklore about a monster with long nails with the head of a fox and body of a human being who kills animals.”
Shraddha Kapoor and Rajkummar Rao’s Stree 2 is currently in theatres.
