Team L&M
The reason of my picking up Ghosts of the Silent Hills from the shelf of that crowded CP bookshop was its title. Ghost stories have always aroused a feeling of wanting to know more about the unknown. And the added line on the cover – Stories based on true hauntings – furthered the reason of reading the book. So, off I was after buying myself a copy of Ghosts of the Silent Hills (Fingerprint!; Rs 250) by Anita Krishan.
A bit of research on the author threw light on Krishan having spent the initial 22 years of her life in Shimla where she got herself a master’s degree in English Literature from Himachal University. An educator, she has penned a number of books including Tears of Jhelum, a sensitive and poignant narrative of one of the victims of terrorism whose heart-breaking stories were otherwise lost forever behind the smokescreen of apathy and indifference and Fluffy and Me, a moving, sensitive, hilarious and deeply touching story of undying friendship between a young girl and her Lhasa Apso and of their escapades as life glides from childhood to maturity in Shimla.
Back to Ghosts of the Silent Hills. In her foreword, Krishan mentions how famous scientist Albert Einstein had “proposed a scientific basis for the existence of ghosts. His first law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed but only changes form.” The author goes on to add how “the concept of ghosts and ghouls has appeared in countless stories – in Shakespeare’s, Charles Dickens’, Ruskin Bond’s, Rudyard Kipling’s, Stephen King’s – just to mention a few?” And how there have been numerous ghost stories that have made “repeated mention in most of the supernatural tales of Shimla.” As Krishan mentions – “Who doesn’t remember the spooky stories told by old aunts and college friends in candle-lit dark rooms?”
Krishan has divided Ghosts of the Silent Hills in two parts, having five stories each. Why has she done so is as good a guess for me as you? But the author, with the use of simple language, has ensured the book is an easy and quick read without one having to look up for words in www.dictionary.com which some authors end up using to show how well-equipped are they with the language.
However, one must admit that each of the stories, beginning with An Uncanny Attachment to The Lodge, manage to involve the reader completely and leave you wanting to know – could this have happened? Did this ever take place? And the ever-pertinent question – Do ghosts exist?
But two stories – An Uncanny Attachment and The Third Housemate — end up sending a chill down one’s spine. Not that others do not but these two are really special stories. The latter had a personal and an immediate connect as one of a very close family friends once experienced paranormal in his rented Vikas Puri house in Delhi. This was back in the 1980s. A bachelor, he had moved in this one bedroom accommodation with a teenage male help who was new to the culture of a city, having migrated from an eastern Indian state. The two of them, alien to one another’s nature and habits, had difficulty settling in as one kept something somewhere and it was found somewhere else. Invariably, the utensils from kitchen landed in the toilet and the toiletries ended up in the living room. And then one day, when he was reading a newspaper in his living room while sipping the morning cup of tea, Rajkumar bhaiya (that’s what I called him) saw a hand, a mere shadow was what he later recalled it being, from a distance reach out to snatch the newspaper. Before that, bhaiya never believed in ghosts and the paranormal but beginning that day, he did. But then, unlike the story of The Third Housemate, this one was more adamant on what the author calls – “the dead do not rest till they get what they want.” It perhaps did get what it wanted. For bhaiya could never return from its clutches and lost his battle with life a few months later.
Not all the stories are from the hills so do not buy the book under the impression that these are all from “up there” like I did. However, worth a mention other stories include The Hospital Room and Lonely In Death. Except these, the others did not made my nights scary. Perhaps, these would result in sleepless nights for you.
