‘Creeping Shadows’: Horror short stories trace cultural history, caste conflicts, national tragedies

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...

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