Shakchunni: Arnab Ray's New Book Taps Into Bengal's Ancient Folklore

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.

Here's an excerpt from Arnab Ray's Shakchunni

Every face turned towards the source of the voice, and there she was. Soudamini, standing in the passage leading from the main hall to the kitchen. Her ghomta was gone.  Her hair had been let down in all its glory. Her shoulders,  which were always hunched, were now straight. Her sari was no longer shapeless but clung tightly around her curves, highlighting her silhouette. Her eyes, perennially turned towards her toes, were now looking straight up. They were beautiful, as if drawn by an expert painter in perfect symmetry, and were neither coy nor seductive, but rather quiet and still. Every man and woman in that kitchen felt her aura, the power she radiated, and her voice seemed to come from afar, even though she was right there. 

No one else breathed. It was the Bouthakurun who broke the silence. 

‘Aha, Queen Victoria descends from her royal bedchambers. To what do we, her loyal subjects, owe the privilege?’ the Bouthakurun snarled. A cruel smile creased her pudgy  face, ‘I hope the commotion did not disturb your repose.’ 

Bhola quickly withdrew, and the Bouthakurun did not care anymore. She walked forward with that rolling motion, brandishing the ladle before her like a sword. 

‘So, my dear Queen Victoria,’ the Bouthakurun continued, ‘what is your command? That your mother-in-law peels the vegetables and boil the rice and de-fin the fish, while you sit up there, one leg over another, preserving your beauty? Well, you have got it all wrong. I am not as easy to control as men are. I can’t be wrapped around a finger by a pretty face, or the flutter of your eyelashes, and the other tricks of a paka khanki, a seasoned whore like you.’ A collective gasp went through those assembled at the use of the vulgarity. Soudamini laughed gently, without fear, not even a whit.
 
‘Oh, is the Queen insulted by me calling her a khanki?  Don’t worry. I am just getting started.’ The Bouthakurun’s eyes tightened into a large ball, threatening to pop out of their sockets. ‘You are a witch. You are putting a hex on your husband and a curse on my younger son. You are eating up my family, aren’t you? And you think you are safe just because you have a way with men? You think you cannot be seen by the rest of us?’ 

Soudamini shook her head. ‘Put down the ladle, Ma, you  can say whatever you want, but you put that thing down.’ ‘Or else?’ the Bouthakurun asked, ‘Or else, what? What will you do, you poor little wretch? What will you do once I flay the flesh off your back? What will you do? Will you  cry your way back to that bastard of a father who fobbed you off, going boo-hoo?’ She brought one hand up to her eye, mocking the act of crying. 

‘Or will you prance over to my son and use your body to grab his attention?’ the Bouthakurun snarled. ‘Or, even better, will you go to your master, the tantrik in the forest,  the one who really owns you, and ask him for a spell to pop my head off? What will you do? Have you thought of that? What will you do if I mark you for life?’ 

Soudamini said nothing but held her own as the  Bouthakurun walked forward slowly towards her, brandishing the ladle menacingly. 

‘Put down the ladle, the Queen says. All of you are witnesses. This barking street dog, the nyeri kutta, threatens me, her mother-in-law, and that too in the kitchen, in my bastion, in my home. She thinks because she knows hexes and spells, she can protect herself from anything, but she is wrong. She can’t. They may work on men but not on women.’ 

The Bouthakurun was now in Soudamini’s face, her head tilted upwards, for she was half a head shorter than her son’s wife. 

‘It will not work on me,’ she said as her lips drew back, baring her teeth, and the words came out in pure hate, ‘I am a mother, and I do not get charmed easy.’ 

She raised her arm, clutching the ladle tightly, the veins in her arm bulging. A maid’s voice came from the back, ‘Don’t!’ as the Bouthakurun brought the ladle down, the heavy metal dropping through the air, moving towards Soudamini’s shoulder. 

And then it happened. Soudamini’s hand shot out like a toad’s tongue flicking out to catch a fly in the air, and she grabbed the Bouthakurun’s arm. The ladle froze in the air, mid-swing. The Bouthakurun’s eyes opened wide in shock, and she tried to pull her arm back, but found it immobile. Soudamini’s face remained as placid as before.  Even as a fully-grown woman huffed and puffed to free herself from her grasp, Soudamini’s body didn’t move, not even an inch, and not even a hair on her head moved. The Bouthakurun used every ounce of her strength to break free of her grip. Her whole body shook from the effort. Then  she yelled, ‘Let me go!’ Yet, Soudamini did not release her grip, standing like a statue, neither angry nor agitated. If any expression could be made from her face, it would be one of mild amusement. 

‘What are you doing, all of you?’ the Bouthakurun screamed, her words coming out in tired gasps, ‘Are you all enchanted? She is fighting me. Help me. She is beating me.’ Yet not one of the servants moved, standing where each stood. 

The Bouthakurun gave one last heave, trying to hit Soudamini with the force of her lunge. But Soudamini’s hold on her did not loosen, and the Bouthakurun fumed impotently, held frozen in space by the strength of  Soudamini’s grip. Realizing the futility of what she was trying to do, the Bouthakurun loosened her fingers on the ladle, which dropped, clanging down on the ground near her toe. Her face was now reddish-pink and she jerked  forward and there were scared mumblings all over, and  Bhola pleaded, ‘Bouma, please let her go.’
 
Right then, the Bouthakurun coiled back, puffed her cheeks and spat in Soudamini’s face. 

The glob of spit, red with paan and warm with her loathing, hit Soudamini square on the nose and cheeks. Yet, she did not flinch, not even a bit, and remained exactly as she was before, holding the Bouthakurun’s arm in the air. 

‘Take that!’ The Bouthakurun’s frenzied eyes glowed and she tried to spit again, but nothing came out. Bouthakurun’s spit dripped down Soudamini’s right cheek, tracing a line on her skin. The Bouthakurun’s chest heaved with the effort of breathing and she dropped her hand now, drained of her energy but not anger. Soudamini said calmly, ‘You should not have done that, Ma.’

Extracted with permission from Arnab Ray's Shakchunni; published by Hachette India