Penguin Book of Indian Ghost Stories Read online

  Savitri overtook her colleagues. Soul-Atmahs teeming everywhere. Like a flock of phlegm-coloured flowers. Some were like a badly rubbed blackboard, all but a faded vestige rubbed off. This herd of pales and greys, scattered in abundance like a Pointicist’s speckled picture, were suddenly on the move, en masse. Shimmering in tremulous motion. One among them still pulsed with the memory of a man she loved.

  Underdone, Overdone, Undone!

  1 ‘Done and not done.’

  2 Achárabhrashta, an apostate or decasted person. See Manu, p., 108.

  3 Wétála, an uncanny being, generally possessing magic powers, given to occupying empty corpses and devouring human flesh.

  4 The lowest caste, whose very proximity was pollution to a Brahman.

  5 This is all one word in the original, únádhikákritamkritam, ‘ what has been done is too little, too much, and not done at all.’

  The Werewolf

  * Sehwan was at this time a part of Karachi district.

  ** The governor of Sind was then called the Commissioner in Sind.

  The Tail-Light

  * Malignant spirit.

  Ghost of Korya Khar

  * As related by Cyril Thomas, the famous shikari.

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  First published by Penguin Books India 1993

  Anthology copyright © Penguin Books India 1993

  The editor and publishers would like to thank the following copyright holders for granting permission to use their stories in this volume: Sandip Roy for Satyajit Ray’s ‘Fritz’ and ‘Anath Babu’s Terror’, R.V. Smith for ‘Ghost of Korya Khan’, Sudhir Thapliyal for ‘The Yellow-Legged Man’, R.K. Narayan for ‘Around a Temple’, Jug Suraiya for ‘A Shade Too Soon’, Victor Banerjee for ‘Red Hydrangeas’, Ravi Shankar for ‘Mixed Blood’, O.V. Vijayan for ‘The Little Ones’, and Jaishankar Kala for ‘The Loving Soul-Atmah’.

  While every effort has been made to ensure that permission to reproduce copyright material included in the book was obtained, in the event of any inadvertent omission, the publishers should be notified and formal acknowledgements will be included in all future editions of this book.

  Cover illustration by Subroto Chowdhury

  Cover design by Sunil Sil

  All rights reserved

  ISBN: 978-01-4017-832-6

  This digital edition published in 2013.

  e-ISBN: 978-81-8475-445-2

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser and without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above-mentioned publisher of this book.