The Hungry Stones (Tags: Ghost stories, Mughal Palaces, Mughal Empire, Trains)

The story, narrated by an extraordinary stranger met on a train, follows a young man appointed as a collector of cotton duties in Barich.

When the train reached the junction, we assembled in the waiting room for the connection. It was then 10 P.M., and as the train, we heard, was likely to be very late, owing to something wrong in the lines, I spread my bed on the table and was about to lie down for a comfortable doze, when the extraordinary person deliberately set about spinning the following yarn. Of course, I could get no sleep that night.When, owing to a disagreement about some questions of administrative policy, I threw up my post at Junagarh, and entered the service of the Nizam of Hydria, they appointed me at once, as a strong young man, collector of cotton duties at Barich.

He takes up residence in a 250-year-old marble palace, built for the pleasure of Emperor Mahmud Shah II.

Barich is a lovely place. The Susta "chatters over stony ways and babbles on the pebbles," tripping, like a skilful dancing girl, in through the woods below the lonely hills. A flight of 150 steps rises from the river, and above that flight, on the river's brim and at the foot of the hills, there stands a solitary marble palace. Around it there is no habitation of man--the village and the cotton mart of Barich being far off.About 250 years ago the Emperor Mahmud Shah II. had built this lonely palace for his pleasure and luxury. In his days jets of rose-water spurted from its fountains, and on the cold marble floors of its spray-cooled rooms young Persian damsels would sit, their hair dishevelled before bathing, and, splashing their soft naked feet in the clear water of the reservoirs, would sing, to the tune of the guitar, the ghazals of their vineyards.

Despite warnings from an old clerk, Karim Khan, that the palace is haunted and "thirsty" for living souls, the narrator is drawn into its supernatural atmosphere. Each night, the desolate halls come alive with invisible spirits from the past; he hears the splash of fountains, the tinkling of anklets, and the laughter of Persian maidens.

The narrator begins to live in two worlds: his mundane daytime reality of tax collection and the intoxicating, historical dreamscape of the palace at night. He finds himself dressing in ancient silks, pursuing an elusive Arab girl through endless corridors, and witnessing fragments of unwritten history. The boundaries between reality and illusion blur until he feels the house is a living organism "digesting" him.

The servants said that they would work till dark and go away at night. I gave my ready assent. The house had such a bad name that even thieves would not venture near it after dark.

At first the solitude of the deserted palace weighed upon me like a nightmare. I would stay out, and work hard as long as possible, then return home at night jaded and tired, go to bed and fall asleep.Before a week had passed, the place began to exert a weird fascination upon me. It is difficult to describe or to induce people to believe; but I felt as if the whole house was like a living organism slowly and imperceptibly digesting me by the action of some stupefying gastric juice.

Perhaps the process had begun as soon as I set my foot in the house, but I distinctly remember the day on which I first was conscious of it.

A local madman, Meher Ali, serves as a recurring omen, shouting, "Stand back! All is false!". The narrator eventually flees after a night of terrifying visions involving a weeping woman in the storm. Karim Khan explains the building is cursed by centuries of unsatisfied longings, turning every stone into a famished predator. The narrative ends abruptly as the storyteller’s train arrives, leaving the truth of the tale a mystery. 

The Victory (Performance [Poetry], Maharajahs/Court, Romantic Suicide, the Hindu storytelling tradition, Storytelling, Monotheism vs. Polytheism)

Shekhar, the court poet of King Narayan, is a man of deep sensitivity who composes songs for the unseen Princess Ajita, whose presence he perceives only through shadows and the tinkling of her anklets from a screened balcony. His peaceful existence is shattered by the arrival of Pundarik, a formidable poet from the south who challenges him to a "war" of the muse. During the contest, Pundarik delivers a thundering performance, utilizing relentless logic, intricate wordplay, and vast scriptural knowledge to prove the supremacy of the "Word".

The trumpet sounded. The great crowd stood up, shouting victory to the king. The king, dressed in an ample robe of white, slowly came into the hall like a floating cloud of autumn, and sat on his throne.Pundarik stood up, and the vast hall became still. With his head raised high and chest expanded, he began in his thundering voice to recite the praise of King Narayan. His words burst upon the walls of the hall like breakers of the sea, and seemed to rattle against the ribs of the listening crowd. The skill with which he gave varied meanings to the name Narayan, and wove each letter of it through the web of his verses in all mariner of combinations, took away the breath of his amazed hearers.For some minutes after he took his seat his voice continued to vibrate among the numberless pillars of the king's court and in thousands of speechless hearts. The learned professors who had come from distant lands raised their right hands, and cried, Bravo!

[...] Then with a marvellous display of learning, he proved that the Word was in the beginning, that the Word was God. He piled up quotations from scriptures, and built a high altar for the Word to be seated above all that there is in heaven and in earth. He repeated that question in his mighty voice: "What is there superior to words?"

In contrast, Shekhar offers simple, heartfelt verses about the legendary love of Radha and Krishna, emphasizing emotional truth and the "Song of the Flute" over intellectual gymnastics.

Next day Shekhar began his song. It was of that day when the pipings of love's flute startled for the first time the hushed air of the Vrinda forest. The shepherd women did not know who was the player or whence came the music. Sometimes it seemed to come from the heart of the south wind, and sometimes from the straying clouds of the hilltops. It came with a message of tryst from the land of the sunrise, and it floated from the verge of sunset with its sigh of sorrow. The stars seemed to be the stops of the instrument that flooded the dreams of the night with melody. The music seemed to burst all at once from all sides, from fields and groves, from the shady lanes and lonely roads, from the melting blue of the sky, from the shimmering green of the grass. They neither knew its meaning nor could they find words to give utterance to the desire of their hearts. Tears filled their eyes, and their life seemed to long for a death that would be its consummation.Shekhar forgot his audience, forgot the trial of his strength with a rival. He stood alone amid his thoughts that rustled and quivered round him like leaves in a summer breeze, and sang the Song of the Flute. He had in his mind the vision of an image that had taken its shape from a shadow, and the echo of a faint tinkling sound of a distant footstep.

Although Shekhar’s songs move the audience to tears, the King is overwhelmed by Pundarik's "stupendous learning" and declares the challenger the winner, awarding him a pearl chain. Heartbroken and feeling his life’s work was trivial, Shekhar returns home, burns his manuscripts, and consumes poison. In his final moments, the bedroom is filled with the scent of flowers as Princess Ajita herself enters. She tells him the King’s judgment was unjust and that he was the true victor. She crowns the dying poet with her own garland, providing him a final, tragic triumph before he succumbs to death. 

The Kingdom of Cards (Tags: Caste, Allegory, Revolution, Individualism, Romantic desire)

This allegorical tale describes a lonely island inhabited by sentient playing cards who live according to rigid, ancient "Rules".

Once upon a time there was a lonely island in a distant sea where lived the Kings and Queens, the Aces and the Knaves, in the Kingdom of Cards. The Tens and Nines, with the Twos and Threes, and all the other members, had long ago settled there also. But these were not twice-born people, like the famous Court Cards.

The Ace, the King, and the Knave were the three highest castes. The fourth Caste was made up of a mixture of the lower Cards. The Twos and Threes were lowest of all. These inferior Cards were never allowed to sit in the same row with the great Court Cards.Wonderful indeed were the regulations and rules of that island kingdom. The particular rank of each individual had been settled from time immemorial. Every one had his own appointed work, and never did anything else. An unseen hand appeared to be directing them wherever they went,--according to the Rules.

The hierarchy—from high-caste Court Cards to lowly Twos and Threes—is absolute; the citizens move in a listless, silent groove, never thinking or making decisions. This stagnant existence is disrupted when a Prince from a far-off land and his two companions are shipwrecked on the island. These strangers ignore all regulations, introducing the concept of "Ichcha" (individual will) and responding to the cards' solemnity with boisterous laughter.

But the Three Companions grew desperately hungry. They had to get food in some way or other. So while this debate went on, with its interminable silence and pauses, and while the Aces called their own meeting, and formed themselves into a Committee, to find some obsolete dealing with the question, the Three Companions themselves were eating all they could find, and drinking out of every vessel, and breaking all regulations.

Even the Twos and Threes were shocked at this outrageous behaviour. The Threes said; "Brother Twos, these people are openly shameless!" And the Twos said: "Brother Threes, they are evidently of lower caste than ourselves!" After their meal was over, the Three Companions went for a stroll in the city.

When they saw the ponderous people moving in their dismal processions with prim and solemn faces, then the Prince turned to the Son of the Merchant and the Son of the Kotwal, and threw back his head, and gave one stupendous laugh.

Their presence initiates a slow awakening among the cards, who begin to realize that life is not bound by pre-ordained patterns. The transformation deepens when the Queen of Hearts catches sight of the Prince and experiences human emotion for the first time.

Hitherto the Queens of Spades and Clubs and Diamonds and Hearts had remained behind curtains with eyes that gazed vacantly into space, or else remained fixed upon the ground.And now, all of a sudden, on an afternoon in spring the Queen of Hearts from the balcony raised her dark eyebrows for a moment, and cast a single glance upon the Prince from the corner of her eye."Great God," cried the Prince, "I thought they were all painted images. But I am wrong. They are women after all."Then the young Prince called to his side his two Companions, and said in a meditative voice; "My comrades! There is a charm about these ladies that I never noticed before. When I saw that glance of the Queen's dark, luminous eyes, brightening with new emotion, it seemed to me like the first faint streak of dawn in a newly created world."

The rigid social order collapses as cards abandon their assigned places; the island is suddenly filled with music, sighs, and the complexities of love and jealousy. The "monotony of the Rule" is replaced by the "yearnings of the heart". Ultimately, the Prince organizes a celebration where the Queen of Hearts chooses him as her mate. They are crowned as the new rulers of the island, which is no longer governed by static regulations but by the inhabitants' own choices to be "good or bad" according to their individual will. 

The Devotee (Religion, material vs. spiritual worlds, false Gurus, Hindu religious practices)

An author seeking solitude in a country village meets a middle-aged mendicant of the Vishnu cult who begins to treat him as her living God: 
 

While I was thus watching and lazily musing, a woman of middle age came and prostrated herself before me, touching the ground with her forehead. She carried in her robe some bunches of flowers, one of which she offered to me with folded hands. She said to me, as she offered it: "This is an offering to my God."She went away. I was so taken aback as she uttered these words, that I could hardly catch a glimpse of her before she was gone. The whole incident was entirely simple, but it left a deep impression on my mind; and as I turned back once more to look at the cattle in the field, the zest of life in the cow, who was munching the lush grass with deep breaths, while she whisked off the flies, appeared to me fraught with mystery. My readers may laugh at my foolishness, but my heart was full of adoration. I offered my worship to the pure joy of living, which is God's own life. Then, plucking a tender shoot from the mango tree, I fed the cow with it from my own hand, and as I did this I had the satisfaction of having pleased my God.

 She offers him flowers and even consumes the "sacred food" left on his plate, unbothered by his lack of traditional orthodoxy. The devotee explains her philosophy: she rejects abstract doctrines of God's omnipresence among sinners, preferring to worship where she can actually perceive the divine.

She eventually shares her tragic life story, revealing a past marked by neglect of her only child, who died by drowning while she was distractedly swimming. In her grief, she sought spiritual solace through her husband's Guru Thakur, a beautiful and learned young man whom she initially viewed as a divine vessel.

"My child-God had come. I had ever neglected Him. I had ever made Him cry. And now all that neglect began to beat against my own heart, blow upon blow, blow upon blow. When my boy was with me, I had left him alone. I had refused to take him with me. And now, when he is dead, his memory clings to me and never leaves me."God alone knows all that my husband suffered. If he had only punished me for my sin, it would have been better for us both. But he knew only how to endure in silence, not how to speak."When I was almost mad with grief, Guru Thakur came back. In earlier days, the relation between him and my husband had been that of boyish friendship. Now, my husband's reverence for his sanctity and learning was unbounded. He could hardly speak in his presence, his awe of him was so great.

This perception was shattered during a private encounter when the Guru expressed physical lust, telling her, "How beautiful is your body!".

"It was a morning in midsummer. I was returning home from bathing, my clothes all wet, down a shady lane. At the bend of the road, under the mango tree, I met my Guru Thakur. He had his towel on his shoulder and was repeating some Sanskrit verses as he was going to take his bath. With my wet clothes clinging all about me I was ashamed to meet him. I tried to pass by quickly, and avoid being seen. He called me by my name."I stopped, lowering my eyes, shrinking into myself. He fixed his gaze upon me, and said: 'How beautiful is your body!'"All the universe of birds seemed to break into song in the branches overhead. All the bushes in the lane seemed ablaze with flowers. It was as though the earth and sky and everything had become a riot of intoxicating joy."I cannot tell how I got home. I only remember that I rushed into the room where we worship God. But the room seemed empty. Only before my eyes those same gold spangles of light were dancing which had quivered in front of me in that shady lane on my way back from the river.

This moment of human frailty destroyed her faith in the Guru's divinity. She realized that the only true "God" in her life had been the unconditional love of her deceased child and her silent, devoted husband. She chose to leave her home to seek "truth alone," eventually viewing the narrator not as an individual, but as a temporary vehicle for her redirected divine worship. She concludes that while God is everywhere, one must seek Him where He is most real to the soul. 

Vision (Tags: Disability, Marital dysfunction, Modern medicine, Polygamy, Calcutta)

Kumo, a young wife, begins to lose her sight following a difficult childbirth. Her husband, a medical student, insists on treating her himself, leading to a rift with her brother, Dada, who advocates for professional help.

When I was a very young wife, I gave birth to a dead child, and came near to death myself. I recovered strength very slowly, and my eyesight became weaker and weaker.

My husband at this time was studying medicine. He was not altogether sorry to have a chance of testing his medical knowledge on me. So he began to treat my eyes himself.My elder brother was reading for his law examination. One day he came to see me, and was alarmed at my condition."What are you doing?" he said to my husband. "You are ruining Kumo's eyes. You ought to consult a good doctor at once."

My husband said irritably: "Why! what can a good doctor do more than I am doing? The case is quite a simple one, and the remedies are all well known."

Dada answered with scorn: "I suppose you think there is no difference between you and a Professor in your own Medical College."

To maintain domestic peace, Kumo engages in a complex deception, pretending to follow her brother's advice while actually using her husband's potentially harmful remedies. Ultimately, the treatment fails, leaving her completely blind.

Overcome with guilt, her husband swears a solemn oath to the family god never to marry again. They move to a small town where Kumo develops heightened senses and spiritual peace, yet she observes her husband becoming increasingly hard and greedy as his medical practice grows. This moral decline culminates when an aunt arrives and pressures him to marry a young girl named Hemangini.

Kumo eventually confronts her husband, who confesses he is terrified of her "awful" saintly presence and desires an "ordinary woman".

"I have to visit a patient in the country," said he. "I shall have to start very early to-morrow morning, and I may have to be away for two or three days."I got up from my bed. I stood before him, and cried aloud: "Why are you telling me lies?"

My husband stammered out: "What--what lies have I told you?"

I said: "You are going to get married."

He remained silent. For some moments there was no sound in the room. Then I broke the silence:"Answer me," I cried. "Say, yes."

He answered, "Yes," like a feeble echo.I shouted out with a loud voice: "No! I shall never allow you. I shall save you from this great disaster, this dreadful sin. If I fail in this, then why am I your wife, and why did I ever worship my God?"

The room remained still as a stone. I dropped on the floor, and clung to my husband's knees."What have I done?" I asked. "Where have I been lacking? Tell me truly. Why do you want another wife?"

My husband said slowly: "I will tell you the truth. I am afraid of you. Your blindness has enclosed you in its fortress, and I have now no entrance. To me you are no longer a woman. You are awful as my God. I cannot live my every day life with you. I want a woman--just an ordinary woman--whom I can be free to chide and coax and pet and scold."

However, a twist reveals that Dada has married Hemangini himself to prevent the husband from committing the "sin" of breaking his oath. The husband returns to Kumo in a state of repentance and self-revelation, realizing his happiness lies only with her. The story concludes with Kumo rejecting the title of "Goddess," asking instead to be accepted as his "own little wife" and an "ordinary woman". 

Living or Dead? (Tags: Ghosts, Widows, Superstitions, Suicide)

Kadambini, a childless widow, "dies" suddenly at the home of her brother-in-law, Saradasankar. Due to a lack of immediate kin, servants carry her to a remote burning-ground. During a storm, the "dead" body revives, and the terrified guards flee, believing they have seen a ghost. Kadambini awakens to realize she has been cast out of the world of the living and begins to believe she is indeed her own ghost.

She seeks refuge with a childhood friend, Jogmaya, but her presence is marked by a "mysterious" and unsettling aura that creates fear in the household. Jogmaya’s husband eventually investigates and receives confirmation from her former home that Kadambini is dead. Confirmed in her status as a spirit, Kadambini flees Nisindapur and returns to her father-in-law’s house, driven by an unquenchable love for her foster-child, Satis.

She is found nursing the feverish child, but the family is paralyzed by horror. Despite her desperate pleas that she is "living, living," Saradasankar piteously begs her to break the "bonds of maya" and leave them in peace. Realizing that she can never be accepted back into human society, Kadambini plunges into the zenana well and drowns. In a final, tragic irony, the narrative notes that "by dying, Kadambini had given proof that she was not dead". 


 

We Crown Thee King (British colonials, Nationalism, Congress Party, Calcutta) 

Nabendu Sekhar, the son of a loyal British collaborator, inherits his father’s sycophancy and seeks the title of "Rai Bahadur".

When Nabendu Sekhar was wedded to Arunlekha, the God of marriage smiled from behind the sacrificial fire. Alas! what is sport for the gods is not always a joke to us poor mortals.Purnendu Sekhar, the father of Nabendu, was a man well known amongst the English officials of the Government. In the voyage of life he had arrived at the desert shores of Rai Bahadurship by diligently plying his oats of salaams. He held in reserve enough for further advancement, but at the age of fifty-five, his tender gaze still fixed on the misty peals of Raja-hood, he suddenly found himself transported to a region where earthly honours and decorations are naught, and his salaam-wearied neck found everlasting repose on the funeral pyre.

However, he marries into a family led by Pramathanath, who had famously burned his European clothes after experiencing British insolence. Nabendu’s clever sisters-in-law, led by the beautiful Labanyalekha, mock his obsession with official favors through satirical gifts and pointed jests.

During a visit to Buxar, Labanya and her husband Nilratan, a nationalist lawyer, manipulate Nabendu’s vanity. They trick him into signing a large donation to the Congress party and orchestrate a series of conflicting letters to the press that label him a fierce patriot.

When the time of Congress drew near, Nilratan received a request from head-quarters to collect subscriptions. Nabendu, free from anxiety, was merrily engaged in a game of cards with his sister-in-law, when Nilratan Babu came upon him with a subscription-book in his hand, and said: "Your signature, please."

From old habit Nabendu looked horrified. Labanya, assuming an air of great concern and anxiety, said: "Never do that. It would ruin your racecourse beyond repair."

Nabendu blurted out: "Do you suppose I pass sleepless nights through fear of that?""We won't publish your name in the papers," said Nilratan reassuringly.

Labanya, looking grave and anxious, said: "Still, it wouldn't be safe. Things spread so, from mouth to mouth--"

Nabendu replied with vehemence: "My name wouldn't suffer by appearing in the newspapers." So saying, he snatched the subscription list from Nilratan's hand, and signed away a thousand rupees. Secretly he hoped that the papers would not publish the news.

Labanya struck her forehead with her palm and gasped out: "What--have you--done?"

They further isolate him from British circles by fabricating a snub toward the District Magistrate. Swept up by the unexpected acclaim from the nationalist movement, Nabendu is celebrated at a Congress rally in Calcutta, essentially ending his prospects for official honors.

When the Queen’s birthday list is released, Nabendu’s name is conspicuously absent from the honors list. In a playful yet poignant climax, Labanya and her sisters hold their own ceremony, crowning him "King" with sandals and garlands.

He received an invitation from Labanya for that evening. When he arrived there, Labanya with great pomp and ceremony presented him with a robe of honour, and with her own hand put a mark of red sandal paste on the middle of his forehead. Each of the other sisters threw round his neck a garland of flowers woven by herself. Decked in a pink Sari and dazzling jewels, his wife Arunlekha was waiting in a side room, her face lit up with smiles and blushes. Her sisters rushed to her, and, placing another garland in her hand, insisted that she also should come, and do her part in the ceremony, but she would not listen to it; and that principal garland, cherishing a desire for Nabendu's neck, waited patiently for the still secrecy of midnight.

The sisters said to Nabendu: "To-day we crown thee King. Such honour will not be done to any body else in Hindoostan."Whether Nabendu derived any consolation from this, he alone can tell; but we greatly doubt it. We believe, in fact, that he will become a Rai Bahadur before he has done, and the Englishman and the Pioneer will write heart-rending articles lamenting his demise at the proper time. 

While the narrative suggests Nabendu might eventually return to his sycophantic ways for a title, the story serves as a satirical critique of the pursuit of colonial status over genuine domestic and national esteem. 

The Renunciation (Widows, Child Widows, Caste, Brahmins, Kayestha, Arranged Marriage)

Set on a serene spring night, the story begins with a rift between the young husband Hemanta and his wife Kusum when Hemanta’s father, Harihar, commands him to expel her immediately. The crisis stems from a hidden truth: Kusum is not the Brahmin maiden she was represented to be, but a child-widow from the Kayestha caste. Kusum, feeling the fragility of human love, reveals she had tried to confess many times but failed, believing now that her husband's love will crumble under the weight of social stigma.

Hemanta seeks out Peari Sankar Ghosal, the man who arranged the marriage, only to find a cold-blooded conspirator. Peari Sankar reveals that the entire union was an elaborate plot to avenge a decades-old insult from Harihar, who had previously destroyed Peari Sankar’s family reputation over a caste dispute. Peari Sankar had manipulated the orphaned Kusum, passing her off as a high-caste girl to "foul" the Mukerji family’s lineage, and only revealed the secret once he had successfully blocked Hemanta’s sister’s wedding by exposing the scandal.

Returning home to a dark and silent house, Hemanta finds Kusum at his feet, resigned to her fate. When Harihar returns to enforce the expulsion, Hemanta makes a radical choice: he refuses to forsake his wife, declaring that he no longer cares for caste. Consequently, Harihar renounces his son, and the couple is left isolated but united, having traded their social status for the integrity of their relationship.