​Ghosts and others living beyond life

Satish Kaushik is making Bhooter Bhabishyat in Hindi. The film that gave Tollywood its biggest hit in years is also poised to be made in Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam. Happy days are here again for ghosts? Unfortunately, this has caused a rift between Anik Dutta and Joy Ganguly. Whose story is it anyway? - says the director. The producer counters - Whose property is the script? A rather serious ending for a comedy that shed light, through human ghosts, on a contemporary problem: the random demolition of houses by realtors.
The problem is real, says the opening pages of Dipankar Mukhopadhyay’s Praner Opare. Solitary cremation ground, untrodden burial ground, deserted mansion, shadowy bushes are all getting rarer by the day. A ‘chilekotha’ on the terrace or a dark garage too is difficult to come by. People don’t drown in ponds, they jump onto Metro rail tracks instead. Ghosts, naturally, have few votaries like Saradindu Bandopadhyay or Bibhuti Bhushan. Praner Opare steps into this vacuum, offering readers not only the author’s own experiences with ghosts but also a well-researched compendium of tales from other shores, famous or unknown.
There are two types of people, says Mukhopadhyay - “those who believe in ghosts and those who don’t.” Major names in literature, Shakespeare to Rabindranath, have dwelt upon them. Ray, who seemed indifferent to the existence of God, created lovable ghosts. “None have proved they don’t exist,” says Mukhopadhyay. Well, whether we believe in them or not, something about ghosts offer a creative spur, it’s clear.
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Everybody hates the thought of running into one, yet no one can go to sleep if someone’s telling a ghost story. “We mortals enjoy feeling uncanny,” says Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay, author of Chhayamoy, Goynar Baksho and Gosain Baganer Bhoot, all three of which have been turned into films. “The supernatural attracts us, thrills us, makes us think about life and death.” And it’s not just the young, nor the old; not only in the East, but also in the technologically advanced West people enjoy representations of encounters with non-humans, he adds.
Haranath Chakraborty’s Chhayamoy tells the story of a ghost who helps NRI Indra Pratap recover his predecessor’s ancient coins from a greedy villager and reconstruct the village. Pishima in Aparna Sen’s Goynar Baksho, a foul-mouthed 72-year-old who spent a lifetime in celibacy and vegetarianism, resents other’s happiness after her death, and appears as a ghost to command one to steal the jewellery box of another! The film unfolds as a comedy but the director uses it to reflect upon the changing place of women in society.
“Every generation of women has shared a different relationship with their jewellery box and through that attachment, we explore the evolution of women’s role in society,” she recently said.
Nitish Roy’s Gosain Baganer Bhoot had Nidhiram, a ghost who’s desperate to put the scare in little Burun - in vain. Burun, taunted by all for scoring 13 in maths, leaves home and heads for the forbidding Bagan where a ghost tries all the tricks in his book - elongate his arms, screw off and screw back his head, etc etc. If only the child succumbed to fear, he could hold his head high amongs ghosts!
Sandip Ray also entertained viewers with Jekhane Bhooter Bhoy, with three short stories by Satyajit Ray and Saradindu Bandopadhyay. The first told about Anathbandhu Mitra and his uncanny experiences in a haunted Birbhum house. The second was about Simon, a mysterious entity haunting the dilapidated ‘Brown Saheber Bari’ in Kalimpong. The third, Bhoot Bhabishyot was based on a relationship a writer shared with a friendly 19th century ghost.
The Ray family’s relationship with ghosts goes back at least four generations. If Upendra Kishore penned ghost stories including that of Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne, Satyajit gave Indian cinema a new idiom when he turned it into a film. After GoGy BaBy, probably we awaited a ground-breaking experience like Shyamalan’s Sixth Sense. Jekhane Bhooter Bhoy had an assured run but didn’t add to our ghostlore. Many had seen Jaideep Ghosh’s Maya Bazar, which too packaged three stories - a thriller, an unrequited love, and a philosophic discussion – all through ghosts.
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Strange as it sounds, ghost stories were long considered staples for young readers. Is it because great imagination, and understanding human psychology, is required to make a bodyless ‘kayahin’ appear real to grown-ups? Ajay Kar had filmed Nabendu Ghosh’s Kayahiner Kahini (1973) with Uttam Kumar and Aparna Sen. It told the story of an apparition’s love although Ghosh’s Asharirini did exactly the opposite: It told the story of ruthless deception perpetrated by a woman’s hunger for physical love.
Let me conclude with my secret affair with ghosts. The first-ever creative writing that emerged with my name was ‘Bhoot.’ It featured in a handwritten magazine published by the Bengali school in Mumbai. And it told of ‘ghosts’ in an abandoned, dilapidated house that came alive at night with sounds of cooking, bathing, walking... When the gutsy findouters zeroed in on the house, what did they learn? That the ‘dead’ are human too, with lives to live.