Upamanyu Biswas
‘Dear Granny,’ the seventh episode of ‘Terror Tuesday: Extreme,‘ follows a family of three women: Montha, her daughter Nulek, and her mother. After Nulek’s grandmother disappears mysteriously on the banks of a river, the family goes through a period of darkness as they try to recover the missing woman’s whereabouts. In her desperation, Montha turns to the services of a local shaman who teaches her an occult ritual to summon her mother back to their home. Unfortunately, something else returns, putting Nulek’s life in grave danger as a result. The episode’s ending intertwines several underlying dynamics between the characters while also showcasing a perplexing turn of events, which leaves more questions than answers about the conclusion. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Nulek’s Special Bond With Her Grandmother
Montha and her mother are looking for eels on the banks of a river. The latter is unhappy with the haul and wishes Montha would buy some eels from the market. Meanwhile, Montha is frustrated with her mother’s pickiness and hopes she will wrap up her business soon. During their conversation, Montha gets a phone call from a work colleague, which she answers by turning her back to her mother. After finishing the call, the woman notices that her mother has vanished, with only her slippers on the wooden platform. She desperately calls her name, thinking she might be pranking her. When she does not answer, Montha realizes her mother has gone missing.
Back home, Montha’s estranged daughter, Nulek, comes downstairs to see her mother in tears. She asks where her grandmother is, stating that if she has gone missing, it is Montha’s fault for being negligent. The young girl is extremely harsh towards her mother because a long time back, she was abandoned by her. Nulek was subsequently groomed and raised by her grandmother, whom she considers her real mother. Anxious that the police nor anyone else is paying any attention to her mother’s disappearance, Montha takes a desperate measure. She visits a local shaman’s shop, where she performs an occult “feet-tying ritual” meant to guide the wearers of a shoe or sandal home.
Three days after the ritual, Montha and Nulek are relieved to find that their grandmother has returned. She seems normal enough, although Nulek finds it hard to believe that she is back with such ease. Regardless, Nulek and her grandmother reconnect the following morning after a small moment of strangeness when the former finds her bedsheet floating in the air mysteriously before it is revealed to be her grandmother underneath. Meanwhile, at her office, Montha gets a phone call from the police telling her that her mother’s dead body has been fished up from the river. She hastens to the site only to discover her rotting corpse. At this point, she has the stark and frightening realization that something else has returned home in place of her mother.
What Happened to the Grandmother?
The disappearance of the grandmother is the inciting incident of the story. Following her vanishing, Montha and Nulek spend most of their days worrying about what could have possibly happened to her. However, their fractious relationship becomes even worse as Nulek hates her mother beyond anything. With her grandmother gone, Nulek feels she should try to find a new mother. Simultaneously, Montha tries her best to atone for her past mistake of abandoning her daughter and prioritizing her life over everything else. Therefore, with her mother gone, she feels a sense of guilt because she disappeared in her presence. Their relief turns into unblinkered fear when both learn that the grandmother who returns back home is a demonic force that has already claimed the life of Montha’s real mother.
The evil spirit’s entry into Montha and Nulek’s house is mainly tied to the ritual performed by the former with the aid of the shaman. During the scene, the shaman explains to Montha that for the ritual to work, she has to concentrate on bringing her mother back home. If she deviates from the main objective, then it is likely that instead of the person she wants, something else will return in its stead. Therefore, while the demon is a scary entity that causes further strife and destruction by launching itself at Nulek, its appearance is a self-inflicted woe caused by Montha. In many ways, the story constantly reminds the viewers that Montha’s inadequacies are why issues are bubbling under the surface of the family.
Years ago, when Montha stepped away from rearing her daughter Nulek, her mother had to step in and take up all the responsibilities. Subsequently, the grandmother formed an intimate and unshakeable bond with Nulek, almost akin to a mother-daughter relationship in a different guise. The pair continues to exist in harmony while feeling that Montha is the odd one out of the bunch. As she never made the right decisions as a parent, both grandmother and granddaughter felt a sense of anger and mistrust towards her. Their shaky relationship is illustrated in the episode’s opening scene as both Montha and her mother have a tenuous conversation about eels. Ultimately, Montha’s split-second distraction causes calamity to befall her mother just as it did with others in her life.
Did Nulek Survive the Grandmother’s Assault?
Although Nulek is content to have her grandmother back, she is somewhat unsettled by the mysterious occurrences in the house following her re-emergence. She observes strange phenomena, like moving bowls, floating bedsheets, and a rotting, ghastly face waiting for her the morning after her return. Naturally, she feels that something is not quite right with her grandmother. However, she buries this feeling deep inside her as she lays her head down on her lap and listens to her sing a lullaby. When she wakes up, she notices that her grandmother’s shadow is far from human in appearance. Subsequently, a scuffle breaks out as Nulek and her grandmother play a dangerous game of hide-and-seek. The former manages to escape the house somehow but only goes so far before she is run over by a vehicle, implying that she met her death on the road.
However, the whole incident is shrouded in mystery and ambiguity. Nulek is shown to be hit by Montha’s car, who, at the time of Nulek’s altercation with her demonic grandmother, is traveling homeward as fast as she can. After Montha runs over her daughter, she exits the vehicle and completely ignores her daughter’s body. Instead, she focuses on a pair of sandals in front of the car. The sandals are tied together in the same manner as Montha’s mother during the “feet-tying ritual.” The picture on the sandals is of Nulek, thereby suggesting that her daughter has also gone missing or is dead, as depicted in the previous scene. However, it is not made explicitly clear whether Nulek died at the hands of her mother.
Following the roadside event, the episode rewinds back to one of the earlier scenes when Nulek throws a glass cup at the wall behind Montha while she is mourning her mother’s disappearance. A paranormal vlogger captures the whole event from one of the windows, noticing that an invisible figure threw the cup. He reveals that the house is a famous haunted location because the only woman who lives in it is Montha. In fact, both her mother and daughter ran away from the house. A demonic Nulek and her grandmother kill the vlogger at the end. They slit his throat and leave him to bleed to death. Their final ghostly appearance suggests that both Nulek and her grandmother are dead and haunting Montha as spirits.
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