The walk down the narrow alley led us to a two-storey building, spread over 2,000 square feet, the colour of rotting teeth, riddled with dark patches. It was one of the clammiest of nights and it felt as if a rancid veil hung heavily over the city of Kolkata. A portion of the roof was missing; the damage visible under the bold beam of the torch light, ruins of what was once a no-nonsense Victorian structure. Well, this was one of my ghost walks through a city that echoes on moonless nights the remnant voices of the British era: 1, Garstin Place in Kolkata.

The building housed the first All India Radio studio in the entire country. The story goes that at night the old pianist who used to entertain the listeners of AIR emerges from the shadows to perform. A stroll through the building would surely send some creepy musical notes up your spine!

As a true Bengali from Kolkata, a city that still lives in the past, I was always very interested in all things ghostly, things that would scare the Diwali lights out of me.

The fascination began with our visits to my grandmother’s house every summer holiday. After dinner my cousins and I would gather around granny as the rains would play havoc, falling furiously on the tin roof, the strong winds further adding on to the ‘spirit’ of the moment. She would revel us, as she began with, “You know what happened once ...?” in a deathly, chilled whisper that was enough to give us goose bumps. She had a whole variety of ghosts packed in her collection of stories, who would haunt us for a few days to come. There were these ghosts called ‘bira’ who mischievously threw things at houses and would ‘squeeze’ the life out of human beings and the best part was as the folklore would have one believe, some people would tame these workaholic ghosts and make them slog in their household!

A grotesque creature

As I juggle through my daily chores, I recall the stories of a ‘bira’ and wish that I had one of them to at least refresh me with a cup of cappuccino at the end of a hard day. Then, there was the ‘baak’, a grotesque creature, infamous for killing people and then taking on their appearance after hiding the corpse in deep waters. While listening to stories about this aquatic ghost we would look suspiciously at each other ... what if one was hiding here in the guise of my cousins?

As I grew up, I was sent to a boarding school in Calcutta (that’s the old name of the city that has that old-world, musty smell of antiquity about it). The school was founded in 1876 in memory of Archdeacon John Pratt, an educationist who lived during the British rule. The school building is a heritage one. At night, as we walked down the creaky, wooden steps or the long, dark corridors, we could vouch for the fact that we could hear whispers, incoherent and chaotic.

Figments of our fertile imagination or were they for real?

To add to the eeriness of the matter, the school was built near the Lower Circular Road Cemetery. Tales abound about one Sir William Hay Macnaghten who was killed in Afghanistan. His wife collected his remains, carried them back to Calcutta and he was buried at the Lower Circular Road Cemetery. It is said that the tree above his grave shakes each time someone narrates his story. Do you reckon the tree twisting and turning at the moment? The silence at night would be punctuated by the loud thumping of the colonial trams as they passed by. At night, the school seemed to take on a hauntingly imperial form of its own.

This ever-appealing genre of stories continued to haunt me as I went to work as a trainee in one of the oldest advertising agencies, off Park Street. Each building on that road had a story to tell, experiences that would up ones adrenaline level all at once. That was the time I couldn’t help but write my first book and of course it was replete with tales of ghosts. Even as a teacher of creative writing in a school, the lessons of mine that have been a hit with the children are the ones based on ‘Halloween’.

My quest for all matters ghostly led me recently to Simon’s Town, near Cape Town. It was the cape’s winter harbour during the Dutch rule. A walk down the ‘Historic Mile’ was surreal. With hunger pangs difficult to ignore, we stepped into Lord Nelson Inn. The ambience spoke volumes, resonating with the unheard voices of people gone by, many years ago. It was as if we had time travelled back to the 1800s ...

One day, when I become a grandmother, I shall probably continue to have the ‘haunting’ story sessions with my grandchildren. As I write this piece, I remember Stephen King: “The muses are ghosts, and sometimes they come uninvited.” Well ‘spooken’ Sir.

Navanita Varadpande is a freelance writer based in Dubai.