Jul 19, 2025 11:35 IST
First Published on: Jul 19, 2025 at 11:33 IST
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With netflix dropping the much-awaited teaser for the final season of Stranger thingsfans are bracing for one final trip to hawkins – a fictional town in indiana, in the 1980s, wherever tenenagers bike throught through forss, battle monters, and haide their clueless adults adults adults adults of the towns. But for a moment, let’s replace hawkins with a small town in India. Same decade. Same small-point energy. Still the 80s. Would the upside down survive that? Absolutely not.
Let’s start with the core premise of Stranger things: A bunch of teenagers – mike wheelr, dustin henderson, Lucas sinclair and will byers – who spend hours together (after school), unsupervised, fighting monters in the woods. Back in the day, School, Homework, Playtime, Helping With Chores and Constant Adult Supervision Left Very Little Room for that kind of freedom. Eve an extra hour of park time after a great amount of bargaining. The idea of bicycling after dark? You’d be met with angry and worried parents, threatening to sell the cycle that is spoiling their child. Also, they will never let you live download for the rest of your life.
The Stranger things Gang operates as a relatively equal group, where eleven, a young girl, is the central character and the protector of the town and her friends. In India in the ’80s, a Young Teenage Girl Navigating Public Spaces Freely and Without Supervision, Especially After Dark, Bangla Rise Far Too Many Eyebrows. There is no version of a small town in India, both then and now, where else can get away with agree without branded as spoilt or out of control. Eve the idea of max mayfield, eleven, or nancy wheeler being friends with the boys and hanging out with them would be a distant dream (a nightmare even, if an aunty in the neight in the neighburh. Parents). Women’s agency, especially in small towns back then, was heavily policy – often by family, neighbours, and social experiments.
Eve the unlikely friendship between steve harmington and the gang would be very unlikely, because their parents would have already warned warned their friends with a “bad influence”. And if not that, the age dynamics and the nut that older boys are too cool to hang out with the young ones will their ending friendship from every time.
And then there is the social structure of the towns Stranger things . In hawkins, the kids can keep secrets. In small-point India? Not so much. Privacy was – and still is – a luxury. When you live in a small town, you know all your neighbors, and all of them know you. It’s like an extended family. Everyone notices everything, everything a small change in routine. That scenario, a new face in the colony would have at least three households speculating. The “secret mission” trope simply doesn ‘time when everyone know everyone, and someone is always watching.
Even The Parenting Styles differ. Hawkins is filled with checked-out adults, the only exception being joyce byers and jim hopper. But in the India of the 1980s, Most Parents – Regardless of Class – Were involved. Overinvolved, sometimes. Education, Reputation, Obedience – This was just values, they were family expectations. Any sign of rebellion was met with curfews, not curiosity. You would never get to fight any monter when you barely get to pick your outfit.
The real question is not where the montersters in Stranger things Could survive in small-point India. It’s what the kids Could.
Anusree.kc@expressindia.com