Now Reading: Aruna Chakravarti’s Creeping Shadows explores the occult in 13 stories
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Aruna Chakravarti’s Creeping Shadows explores the occult in 13 stories
Aruna Chakravarti’s Creeping Shadows explores the occult in 13 stories
Aruna Chakravarti's new anthology Creeping Shadows gathers 13 stories exploring ghosts, possession, clairvoyance, and other occult phenomena. Chakravarti, known for historical fiction, told an interviewer she wanted to write based on imagination…
The Story in Brief
Aruna Chakravarti's new anthology Creeping Shadows gathers 13 stories exploring ghosts, possession, clairvoyance, and other occult phenomena. Chakravarti, known for historical fiction, told an interviewer she wanted to write based on imagination rather than research. The stories range from 19th-century Calcutta to contemporary Delhi and draw on Bangla folk traditions. The author has no personal experience with the supernatural, but her background in scriptwriting and dramatised readings lends a visual, dramatic edge.
The Indian Opinion
The narrative that Indian English fiction is only about diaspora woes or historical epics is lazy. Creeping Shadows shows how the supernatural can carry pointed social satire and feminist commentary, as seen in the petni and shankchunni tales. Skeptics may dismiss ghosts as silly, but Chakravarti uses them to examine real-world inequities like caste and women's hunger. The real test will be whether mainstream reviewers engage with the book's substance or just call it a 'spooky collection'.
Source: millenniumpost.in
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