It is a sultry Kolkata afternoon and we are looking for ghosts in a quiet neighbourhood just off one of the busiest shopping districts in the city.
Our guide to the other world is Harsho Mohan Chattoraj, aka Harsho – graphic novelist and illustrator.
Harsho’s latest book is titled Ghosts of Kingdoms Past – it takes a piece of the city’s well documented history and gives it a “spirited” twist. Based on the legend of Nawab Siraj Ud Daulah, the last independent Nawab of Bengal (which also largely included present-day Bihar, Jharkhand, and Odisha – the graphic novel makes its way through the innards of Kolkata, cliché-ridden and chaotic, but intriguing never the less.
We are walking around the sites and taking in the sounds of the city that is the battleground for an epic clash between the Nawab and the British in Harsho’s book.
Sir Alec Morgan, known for his “innovative investigations of paranormal occurrences” arrives in Kolkata to launch his book The Demons in our Spirits, and to look for ghosts in the city known for its love for macabre urban lore. With the help of his street-smart local guide Joga, he scours the popular haunted spots, looking for paranormal activity but finds nothing.
Sir Alec promptly rubbishes the city’s paranormal legacy, scoffing at how the city has failed to interest or excite him. “Calcutta has no spirits,” he declares to the utter dismay of those gathered at his book launch. However, someone in the audience, a mysterious figure, suggests he visit the St Mary’s cemetery before making up his mind.
Morgan agrees and what follows is a tumultuous journey back and forth in history and a life-altering experience for the hard-nosed researcher.
The story holds a fantastical premise that takes the reader through Kolkata’s cemeteries dating back to the Colonial era, to crumbling mansions and decrepit homes in North Kolkata and South, that give the city its unique character. “Most importantly, I wanted to look at Siraj ud Daulah’s end. Everyone knows the Black Hole tragedy and how Mir Jafar at the Battle of Plassey betrayed him. But no one quite knows the details of how he died,” says Harsho.
His research threw up some interesting nuggets. “For instance, I found out that the Brits called the Nawab Sir Roger Dowleh,” he says. Harsho’s take on the Nawab’s rebellion against the East India Company that orchestrated his tragic end and historic misrepresentation is far from the jingoistic retelling of history common today. But it does nudge one to rethink how the Nawab, best remembered for his fall at the Battle of Plassey, which altered the course of Indian history, may have been the first of the “nationalists”.
With 20 years of work and nearly twice as many titles and publishing projects to his credits, Harsho is known for his distinctive style. Having worked on big ticket national and international projects – for, inter alila, Amar Chitra Katha, Tinkle, Rajasthan Royals, Hyderabad Graphic Novel, Delhi Comic Con, Around the Swiss World in 20 Days, Caravan, Digit, The Telegraph, etc) he is a familiar face at Comic Con events and workshops.
We are at one of the locations pictured in the novel, as Harsho takes us through the process of turning photographs into panels. A process he has detailed in the book for the benefit of aspiring illustrators and graphic novelists.
This neighbourhood, meticulously detailed in the novel, just off Lake Market in South Kolkata, is dotted with garish new structures standing cheek-by-jowl with houses dating back to 1930 or so. Some of them look botoxed in fresh coats of blue, red, pink and orange paint and plaster. Others look their age, with roots and branches forcing their ways through crevices and skeletal bricks and iron grimacing under flaking plaster.
“There are endless possibilities with this city,” says Harsho as we pause before the house that is Sir Alec’s first port of call. “There are so many cultures, so many histories and so many stories here that as a storyteller and graphic novelist it’s exciting to be here.” In the book, Joga brings his guest to this house, vouching for its haunted pedigree. “Even Sir Edmund Hillary stopped by this house after climbing Everest,” he says.
Sir Alec is not impressed.
According to Harsho, as well as Sir Alec (who, we are told, has been based on one of his Swiss friends who visited the city to look for ghosts for a special project), people in Kolkata take their ghost stories rather too seriously. And that was where the idea of the book came from.
Harsho and his friend traversed the city, photographing all the so-called haunted sites. “We found nothing, other than rumours,” he says with a smile, “but there was enough fodder for the book.”
This house, for instance, stands between two swank structures that are evidently eating into the remains of what was once an elegant mansion. Between the time Harsho photographed and illustrated it, and our visit, it has turned into the neighbourhood dump yard. We hold our noses as we chat, even as a civic worker empties his garbage cart out right there.
“Even if there were spirits, they could not have tolerated this stench,” says Harsho, as we walk away looking for spirits in the next decrepit house. We encounter none, except a mysterious man, dressed in rags but too well-built for a beggar, who begins to follow us doggedly.
“I have never encountered anything like this in this part of the city,” says the usually unflappable Harsho, looking quite anxious. Strangely enough, no matter how briskly we walk or change our course, the man keeps popping up at every turn. Almost like the mysterious character in his novel who urges Sir Alec to visit the cemetery. And whose face the researcher sees in every man, in every gully.
Excerpts with permission from Ghosts of Kingdoms Past, Harsho, Penguin Books India.
