Author: Arnab Ray
Publisher: Hachette India
Have you heard of the lore of Shakchunni?
Shakchunni: a demon from Bengali lore, one who possesses married women. The
Great Famine scours Bengal. The once verdant countryside is now a mass morgue.
Yet none of that pain seems to touch the Banerjees, the lords of Shyamlapur.
They rule their fiefdom with an iron fist and great pomp and pageantry. There
is the Raibahadur, his wife, and his two young sons – Narayanpratap, the
slender poet- intellectual, and Rudrapratap, boisterous and handsome. When
Narayanpratap comes back from London, abandoning his education as a barrister
and having been heartbroken by an Englishwoman, Raibahadur and his wife marry
him off to a poor girl from a distant village, the ethereally beautiful
Soudamini. But on the day of the wedding ceremony, just before a tantrik dies,
he sounds an ominous warning. 'The Shakchunni dances tonight. You shall all
fall dead like flies.' Soon it starts. Soon it starts. The terror. And a
haunting of dark secrets that refuse to stay buried in the past.
Set in the time of the Great Famine of Bengal, Shakchunni is a book that utilizes the local folklore of Shakchunni who possesses the bodies of married women. Arnab has developed the story inside the Banerjee family of Shyamlapur. The Raibahadur and his two sons form the protagonists of the story. The elder son, Narayanpratap, is an intellectual person, and has recently returned from London, nursing a broken heart. Seeing his distress and the insistence of the Raibahadur for an heir, he is married off to Soudamini, a poor girl from a far-off village. Things take a turn when a tantrik sounds an ominous warning to the family. What I loved about the book was that it is not your run-off-the-mill horror fiction writing that has jump scares or paranormal entities roaming around the corridors of the Raibahadur home. Arnab’s writing is quite excellent and he has actually written about the social stigmas and a lot about the human psyche. The first half of the book, while setting up the lore of Shakchunni, also sets up the social background of what is happening in Shaymlapur and in Calcutta. Another aspect of the book that I liked was that there are hints that you keep on pulling to understand the real picture but every time you hazard a guess, something flips and you are sucked back into the story. The writing is extremely engaging and the fear that Arnab wants the reader to feel is quite palpable. The language used is easy to understand and you get the feeling that you are living the story as you read.
Coming to the characters, I felt that the characters are the backbone of
this wonderful book. The manner in which Arnab creates the characters is quite
nice. Starting with Narayanpratap, the lovelorn older son has been described in
detail and you cannot help but feel pity for him, and on the other hand
Rudrapratap’s character makes you realise that things are not always what they
seem. Soudamini’s character and her transformation is one of the best character
arcs I have read in recent times, and coupled with the revelations in the
climax, you realise the expertise of Arnab as a storyteller par excellence.
Last, but not the least, Handi’s character and her development is yet another
example of how each and every person in the story is important, and if you
overlook them, you do so at your peril.
While I have written about the book from a fictional book perspective,
the book also touches upon a lot of social stigmas that were prevalent at that
time, and some still are. Arnab explores these concepts in an excellent manner
and I must say that one must read this book, if not for the horror, but for the
social commentary. The book scores a 4.63/5 for me.
Get a copy of the book on Amazon India or your nearest bookstore.
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