Thiruvananthapuram boy's horror book in Amazon's bestseller list

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: At the age of five, anything would have scared Aaaqil M Aju. A decade later, the boy confronted his phobia by penning a short story collection, that too in the genre that once gave him nightmares. A short story collection called 'The Strignt' containing 46 horror stories is now on the market.

‘The Strignt' is number two on Amazon's bestseller list. The book was released last January when Aaaqil was in the 10th standard. Aaaqil is a class 11 student of Mukkolakkal St Thomas School. It was Aaaqil’s father Aju S Siva, an associate director in television serials, who nurtured in the young boy a love for horror genres.

While in his sixth standard, Aaaqil and his father walked into an unusually quiet movie theatre in the capital city. Despite the big hullabaloo, the boy had no idea that he was going to watch the movie 'The Conjuring Part One. The hair-raising movie changed his phobia for good. He soon developed a love for the horror genre.

Horror novels and short stories soon became his favourite pastimes. The shelves in his house in Mannanthala are replete with horror genre books. ‘The Strignt' contains stories Aaaqil wrote between years 6 and 15.

“I came up with the title. It is one of the names of a villain character in my stories. First I had a normal title, but soon pondered over a change as it would be mundane to stick with a normal one. Change is inevitable” said Aaaqil.

Aaaqil after his schooling is keen on entering into mollywood. He has already completed two stories and is looking for an opportunity to talk with Fahad Faasil to play the lead role in his movie. If the dream becomes a reality, Aaaqil hopes to jump to Hollywood.