Ghosts In Bengal Have New Admirers Now

Ghosts in Bengal were literary or underground. They’ve new admirers now.

- Dola Mitra

IT was a storm-struck night 30 years ago. Boteshwar Thakur, who was 52 years old then, had gone to his village in Uttar Pradesh along with his two daughters. His wife was alone at home, which was on the ground floor of an ancient palace of the former king of Andul, in West Bengal’s Howrah district. “Suddenly, she heard an ear-splitting crash,” Thakur says, recalling what his wife told him later. The terrace had caved in, along with the floor of the ‘naach mahal’ on the level just below, exposing a black sky lacerated with thunder and lightening. And there were voices from within. It was eerie. “It could have been a coincidence,” Thakur says, trying not to believe rumours hears about his home being haunted. “After all, this is a very old and crumbling haveli and it was raining heavily.”

But locals insist that “the ghosts that haunt Andul Rajbari” pick out people when they are alone. “In all these years, why did the roof of this rajbari fall on the one night when everyone was gone?” Say antan Mukherjee (22), who lives close by, asks. “I come here with friends, especially on hot summer nights because the windsw ept open space around the mansion is soothing. We often stay past midnight. But it is only on the night I came alone that I heard ‘it’,” he adds. Referred to euphemistically as a disembodied ‘it’, Sayantan is talking about “the sound of ghungroos and the wail of children” emanating from inside the uninhabited sections of the mansion. Others say that they have “felt sudden, unexplaineddrafts of cold wind” and “seen shadowy figures” sweep past towards the rajbari.