What do you want readers to take away from the book?
Emotions. It’s not just one of them that the story evokes. At some point, it makes you a little scared, but at times, it makes you laugh out loud. It brings in aspects of being in a city, and the kind of people you meet and things you see around you. It’s also about being kind and empathetic and trying to understand that sometimes people have difficulties with life.
Yes, it is an entertaining story. But at the same time, there are these little things that nudge you to want to think.
While the story breaks away from many familiar ghost stereotypes, you’ve also retained details like ghosts lingering by trees or inhabiting dark, quiet corners. Was this a conscious choice to give young readers a sense of familiarity while reimagining the idea of ghosts?
Definitely. Because we do expect the ghosts to be in dark or isolated places. Since these are ghosts who have been displaced, I wanted to reason why they were coming to the city after being displaced. I also wanted, it’s a little ironic, but to humanise the ghosts a little bit in terms of how they too face problems. In the story, they are ghosts, but in any other way, it could be people who just come from anywhere else as refugees for various reasons. In the story, they are formally ghosts and not anything else.
Also, a bit of it comes from my reading. Ghost stories are very prevalent in Bengali children’s literature. There are stories in which the ghosts are not scary, and all kinds of things happen to them. It’s a very integral part. If you read some of those stories, you’ll find that supernatural things are happening in them. But, they are not always just supernatural; there is another aspect to it, another layer to it. That sort of subconsciously also worked for me because for us, ghosts would never be just someone who doesn’t have a head or whatever, as mentioned in the book.