In her book Lamplight , Kankana Basu takes us deep into the hinterlands of 1934 Bihar. A sprawling ancestral home of the aristocratic Chattopadhyays plays host to paranormal activities. Not your typical haunted house novel, Basu’s writing is gentle, and the ambience soothing. Of course, it doesn’t change the fact that you might still need to sleep with the lights on.
Excerpts from an interview:
Do you find that Indian authors aren’t writing enough horror today?
There is an absolute dearth of material in the horror genre, the thing is its very distressing because you find that nearly everybody is interested in ghost stories, nearly everyone has had some paranormal experience or another, and our Indian culture is so rich in paranormal stories. There is so much scope to tap the rural fodder, the urban lore, so much to base stories on. It is a huge disappointment that this area has not been tapped at all.
If there are people who love this genre, why do you think it barely sees any activity?
What I think is that there is a very regrettable trend that people are thinking of what is commercially saleable. You write about love and romance and vampires, and everything has to go according to the tried and tested formula. It’s what most writers try to follow, because at the end of the day you want your book to sell. When it comes to exploring the paranormal area, a lot of authors feel that maybe it won’t sell well in the market. Along with that, there are a lot of over-the-top horror stories being written.
A little about experimenting with this genre yourself?
I ventured into this area because my grandfather, the Bengali Saradindu Bandopadhyay who wrote Byomkesh Bakshi , had written a huge stock of ghost stories which were very popular with the Bengali readers. A lot of them got translated into television serials. My family had always dabbled in the occult. The paranormal streak is very strong in me, and I’ve had a couple of creepy experiences myself. I wrote these stories entirely when recuperating from a surgery. I didn’t know if the book would be taken by any publisher. I was writing for kicks, lying in bed and experiencing writing ghost stories. Fortunately I had an editor who was very enthusiastic, Saugata Mukherjee. He had done my previous book, Cappucino Dusk , and was immediately willing to take on Lamplight . When he left HarperCollins to join Pan Macmillan, he took my book with him. For me, it was a very pleasant experience. I started writing with zero expectation. But I am privileged that way. I have other things that I do. This is not my bread and butter. I could afford to take that risk. But I feel like that that’s the main stumbling block for other authors sometimes. So you need to find a publisher who has a passion for this topic and is ready to understand that the book might not sell. What makes matters worse is that the publishing industry seems to be going through a tremendous lull. So they want something that has all the masala, and will sell.
How was the response to for “Lamplight”?
I got a very heartening response from readers. They liked the old-world charm, and were reminded of old movies like Madhumati . They liked the set up, which was not over the top. But it was a niche readership. While the book did well, I wouldn’t say though, that it is anything but a quiet success. It would never be the book that every third person picks up. It’s for people who like that kind of writing. It’s a book with a lot of ambience, and only a certain kind of reader will like it.
We have not yet had a writer who has achieved success writing solely in this genre. Do you think it’s at all possible?
If an author were to write a book that could appeal to a wide range of public, putting a lot of horror into it without compromising on quality or merit, I think it would be very possible. If you see the movie Omen , it’s very frightening and very good, but isn’t over the top or explicit. Everything is in your imagination and the movie is beautifully shot. There is a kind of brooding feel to the entire film. If an author could do that, without compromising on good taste, I think it could set a trend and get noticed.
