The 13 stories of familiar places and timelines in Aruna Chakravarti’s Creeping Shadows cast dark shadows over ordinary lives. Those who perceive occult beings or believe in their presence perceive another reality. Chakravarti writes from such other-world experiences of people she has known and stories she has read. Facts and fiction in her ghost stories trace cultural history, caste conflicts, images of colonial Calcutta, the horrors of the 1984 riots, and strange activities in an exotic Chinese tea-room which impinge upon our vision with deeper moral considerations.
“Vendetta”, set in Chittaranjan Park, South Delhi, seems too close for comfort when a war of trees with man, “its mighty roots rising high in the sky”, protests against the heedless destruction of the environment. “The Necklace” is equally chilling with tainted family jewels and youthful passion between an Anglo-Indian woman and her lover from Rajasthan royalty; he thinks rejection is treason – punishable by death “for women who betrayed and humiliated their men”.
Ghosts across space and time
Chakravarti’s premise for her fiction is that ghosts travel across space and time. So, “The House of Flowers” centres upon Zihan Zhang’s secret, transported from distant China, which he finally entrusts to his granddaughter, Mei, on his deathbed. He once lay in drunken sleep by a coffin with a broken seal. A beautiful form in “sheer white muslin” tried to maul him and a “lily-white hand with the long tapering fingers” hung over the box before it settled beside the dead woman inside.
This thrilling description of a Chinese tea-house more than a century ago is juxtaposed against recent scenes in contemporary Kolkata, where families of different nationalities co-exist, eating Chinese and Bengali cuisine and communicating in several languages, which the voyeur-narrator enjoys. Again, Hansdhwani Kapur leaves his ancestry behind in Western Punjab and seeks a life for his descendants on the Gangetic shore of West Bengal. However, norms of arranged marriages within this Khatri family meant that if suitable spouses were not found locally, girls would return to alien lands where “even notions of decent behaviour were different”. Unnatural deaths across generations of relatives led to Tara’s frightening realisation: “Spirits… prey on the weak and vulnerable” (“Truth is Stranger than Fiction”.
The piece de resistance of Chakravarti’s collection is undoubtedly “Possessed”, where 19th-century colonial history connects London and Calcutta through theatre. The author opens with an innocuous but gendered description of Sonagachi, where prostitutes live nights of pleasure, suffer debilitating illnesses, children are born fatherless, women are routinely abandoned, but some make it to the glittering world of music and play-acting. Chakravarti delves into history for Teenkori Dasi, who becomes a reputed courtesan before she is noticed by the great Girish Ghosh, doyen of Bengali theatre.
When he adapts Shakespeare’s Macbeth for the Bengali stage, he tutors Teenkori to play Lady Macbeth. Events unfold within a social framework of powerful storytelling as Macbeth was indeed performed in Calcutta under actor-director-writer Girish Ghosh at the National Theatre. Grainy photographs support his moments of triumph. Chakravarti also reminds her readers that English actress Sarah Siddons was famous as Lady Macbeth in London’s Drury Lane. People later believed Siddons’ ghost haunted those same playhouses. Other strange factors related to misfortunes, accidents and deaths have dogged Macbeth productions over centuries, globally. Critics, too, have long claimed that Lady Macbeth was the fourth witch who appears briefly in the play.
Tying these knots tighter and weaving ghostly trances into a panegyric performance, Chakravarti’s mystic tale is imaginatively perfect. She brings to life India’s largest brothel, which spreads its tentacles over North Kolkata, close to stately mansions, even today. She recreates early Shakespearean drama during the Raj, summarising temperamental Girish Ghosh aptly – “eyes, perpetually bloodshot from the brandy he imbibed… the power of his voice and personality… a volatile temper”. His lead actress is no less real. Her dark skin painted pink, she was “the picture of a medieval Scottish nobleman’s wife. Tall, straight and stately, there was a mannish air about her”. In the final denouement, Teenkori leaves the audience spellbound yet, dumbfounded!
Benign and fun-loving ghosts
Chakravarti is deeply interested in building background for her stories, which makes her plots rather complex and meandering. Her descriptions wander through cities and households, marking cadences in various socio-cultural milieus by citing customs, food and religious rituals, including fearful interactions with Guru-Ma’s and tantric sadhus. Several stories like “Possessed” are intensively researched. These supernatural beings play plausible, ordinary roles like strangers appearing casuall…
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