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December 5, 2004
REVIEWS: Believe it or not
Although mists, forests, thunderstorms, abandoned houses, and cemeteries all feature prominently in this riveting collection of 28 short stories, they reinvent old-fashioned tales of terror in more ways than one. Indian author Ruskin Bond combines elements from the two traditions he grew up with, i.e., western literature and Indian folklore, to create a new genre — the modern Indian ghost story. Moreover, unlike most stories of otherworldly beings and the undead, many of Bond’s tales purport to be eyewitness accounts, lending an aura of authenticity to narratives that would otherwise simply entertain without offering much food for thought.
Bond is also different from many other authors of ghost fiction in as much as he investigates the humorous implications of some of the paranormal encounters he presents in his stories. It is hard not to laugh at the practical jokes a mischievous though harmless ghost plays on the author and his family in “The Haunted Bungalow”, which, along with “The Black Cat”, “The Trouble with Jinns”, “The Daffodil Case”, and “The Family Ghost”, explores the supernatural’s comic potential.
The paranormal is poorly represented in Indian literature. Ghost stories, which form an important part of the edifice of western fiction, mostly exist in India as oral legends. Bond’s stories stand out in Indian writing because they document indigenous myths as well as borrow Gothic motifs from western literature.
While Bond, who was born and bred in India, sets virtually all of his narratives in his country of origin, many of the stories themselves take inspiration from English and American classics. “Whispering in the Dark”, which, like the play Arsenic and Old Lace, features two spinster sisters with a penchant for murdering their elderly male guests, is a case in point. Furthermore, this short story, as well as others, such as “The Monkeys” and “Ghosts of the Savoy”, illustrates the concept of the deceased haunting the places they had frequented or resided in during their earthly existence. As Bond himself writes in the introduction, the haunted house is a prominent theme in the works of Dickens, Kipling, and Henry James.
Stories like “The Family Ghost”, “The Haunted Bungalow”, “The Trouble with Jinns”, and “Ganpat’s Story”, however, are quintessentially Indian. They devote substantial space to prets, the ghosts of victims of accidental deaths or drownings who did not receive a burial, as well as other supernatural denizens of peepal trees. (According to Buddhist teachings, the peepal is a most holy tree, for the Buddha had been sitting under one when he attained Enlightenment. Bond, however, makes no allusion to the peepal’s sacred associations; in fact, one is left to wonder if there is any connection between the peepal’s importance in Buddhism and the fact that it is also a home for malicious spirits.)
Jinns, who are said to be beings of flame or air, are capable of assuming human or animal form and dwelling in all sorts of environments. They can achieve physically impossible feats, like the author’s friend Jimmy in the black comedy “The Trouble with Jinns”, who, though human in appearance, could lengthen his right arm up to 40 feet; nevertheless, jinns are mortal. The plot of the above-mentioned story centres on the belief that jinns, who are responsible for many diseases and all kinds of mishaps, are more prone to committing evil deeds than human beings. Legend has it that a human being who knows the required magical procedure can exploit the powers of jinns, but the author, who alone was privy to Jimmy’s actual identity and therefore in a position to blackmail him, mentions no instance where he takes advantage of his friend’s powers.
One of the best qualities of Bond’s anthology lies in the fact that his putative experience with ghosts is a personal one. He claims to see not only the ghosts of people he did not know in life in the manner of the narrator of Wuthering Heights, but also the spirits of his father (“The Vision”) and his friend Kishen (“Reunion at the Regal”). His stories of sightings of or interaction with the dearly departed reflect the universal human unwillingness to accept the passing of loved ones from this world. Many of Bond’s stories are plausible because he presents them as firsthand accounts and tacitly expresses a need that is shared by most people, even rational ones: namely, to transcend mortality.
A Face in the Dark and Other Hauntings: Collected Stories of the Supernatural
By Ruskin Bond
Viking/Penguin India. For more info log onto www.penguinbooksindia.com
ISBN 0-67-005798-3
197pp. Indian Rs250
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