The Return of the Spooky Pumpkin

"Halloween wraps fear in innocence, as though it were a slightly sour sweet. Let terror, then, be turned into a treat" ~ Nicholas Gordon

It doesn't take a genius to guess that for a horror movie addict like me, Halloween has to be, most definitely, my favorite festival. I love the legends, the stories, the spooky Jack-o-lanterns, the grotesque masks, the scary costumes, the kids going around for trick or treat... everything! 

Since I cannot go trick or treating myself, and there is no Halloween party invite happening in my life, I put all my enthusiasm into carving the pumpkin and making it as spooky as I can. Last year I carved my first pumpkin and I enjoyed it so much and was so thrilled with the output, I did a post to brag about how I went about it. Ofcourse post that post, I saw a pumpkin carving master in action and then I wanted to hide myself under the autumn leaves piled up in a corner in my garden, out of sheer embarrassment at harping on about my own less than juvenile effort! 

This year, I was invited by V1's teacher to join them as they went picking pumpkin picking on a school trip. While I was thrilled to the tip of my toes, V1, I discovered didn't reciprocate the same feeling when he saw me climb into the school bus. "I am a big boy now. You cannot come to my trip" he grumbled and then proceeded to ignore me for the rest of the trip. So to pacify him and assuage his hurt ego, I let him decide on the pumpkin this year. I bit back every protest I was dying to make about it not being orange but a bright yellow, about it having white freckles like spots all over it and about it not being straight. Instead I smiled and let him pick up the large pumpkin we would carve and consoled myself by picking some prettier tiny ones from the farm shop.

For this post, I thought I'd just put in a few pictures - of my desperately-trying-to-be-spooky pumpkin. I had promised myself that this year's attempt will atleast be scarier than last year but it kept becoming more like a meditating Buddha and less like a spooky pumpkin! So without further ado, here are the pictures -

Starting the carving.

Desperate attempts to make it look terrifying and not like a meditating Buddha

Here it is, midst all the tiny pumpkins on the window sill

Here is one of the tiny pretty ones I picked up

And here is another with my scary Buddha pumpkin in the background

Here are all my pretty pumpkins...

And this is how it looks in the night 

And finally, here is one of my two little pumpkins, who seem to take after their mommy in their love for all things horrifying. They chose their own masks and ever since they picked them, they have been going around trying to scare me. I was happy that they didn't know about the concept of 'trick-or-treat' and had no intention of introducing them to it. However my relief about their not knowing about candy lasted only till the first batch of trick or treaters arrived. They watched mesmerised as the first bunch collected their candies. When the second gang knocked on our door and started taking the candy from the box I was holding, the damage was done. They had figured out that there was a cause and effect relationship between screaming "trick or treat" and "Happy Halloween" while wearing strange costumes and being offered candy in return. So as soon as I shut the door on Batch 2, they immediately ran to put on their fluorescent green masks and came back to me, screaming "Trick or treat. Gimme candy".

And thus ended all my grand declarations about how they are too young and too clueless to associate Halloween with candy!!!