Of Ghosts and Other Perils

Of Ghosts and Other Perils brings together seven of the author’s stories not translated before. Lullu is a ‘civilised, modern’ ghost who steals a married woman from Delhi and hides her in a chamber below a lake, but Amir, her husband, with the help of a weaver-singer, an astrologer, an exorcist, and other ghosts rescue her by making Lullu an opium-addict. In Nayanchand’s Business we find a tale of a bull under orders of his ex-owner about to wreak havoc as he makes Yama, the god of the netherworld, and his assistant Chitragupta run in panic to escape being gored. Some of the situations—as when the torso of a man is joined by a quack doctor to the rear portion of a cow after an accident (Another Story by Damarudhar)—produce more fun and dramatic turning points than the reader usually expects.

Troilokyanath’s fiction also has elements of social criticism tinged with satire, though with a light touch. And as the translator, Arnab Bhattacharya, points out in a scholarly Afterword, Troilokyanath has been called with some justification a magic realist, a pioneer in Bangla writing.