The ghosts are back in this follow-up to Tanushree Podder’s 2021 young-adult fiction, Spooky Stories. In this sequel-of-sorts, which is also a crossover work into adult readership, the mise-en-scène is a classic one.
Uday Sengupta travels from the US to India to visit his uncle, Keshav Roy, after many years. The taxi driver abandons him on a desolate road. Sengupta reaches his uncle’s dilapidated house on a moonless night. It is raining; there is no electricity. In the dining room, dimly lit by candles, the uncle and his friends are telling stories. Spooky stories, of course.
The ghosts in these tales are on a personal mission to seek revenge on those who have wronged them. The stories also seem to imply that you can never escape past misdeeds; good old ‘nemesis’ will catch up with you. The evil doll, a standard trope of horror movies, makes an appearance in the book, and the tale is appropriately chilling, even as it follows a predictable pattern. Reincarnation, another old Indian favourite, also finds its way through the narrative.
In one of the most absorbing tales, ‘Too Late for Regrets’, the ghost is, well, different. Here, the emotions of loyalty and affection dictate the actions of the ghost and cast a light on how human beings sometimes seem to see the world with blinkers on, and in the process fail to recognise the true worth of something right in front of them.
The stories are written in a simple, engaging style. None of them is particularly hair-raising, in the sense that one can easily glean how some of them will pan out. This, however, does not detract from the story that holds onto the reader’s attention.
Each tale is accompanied by an illustration that goes directly to the heart of the story, drawn by Sucharita Sengupta Suri.
There are two factors that work for the book. One, the ghosts are of different kinds and not uniformly evil, with some revealing distinct human traits. If there is a greedy ghost, there is also a kind one, infusing the stories with pleasant variety.
There is also humour, nostalgia, whimsy and some good old-fashioned creepiness in them. The other is how the stories are set in different places. These varied locations––the Island of Dolls in Mexico, the Bengaluru airport or a tea plantation––all add colour to the stories.
Finally, there is a subtle message that the story concerning Uday Sengupta conveys––you have to take the trouble to keep in touch regularly and meet your near and dear ones, however far away you may be. If that effort is not taken, relationships, like ghosts, can vanish into thin air.