The Hungry Stones by Rabindraneth Tagore, 1895
The magic trick:
Complicating a ghost story into a pondering on society and religion
Yesterday, we saw a house come to life in “A Bruise The Size And Shape Of A Door Handle” by Daisy Johnson. Going back a century today, we find another central character in the form of a house. In “The Hungry Stones,” a tax collector stays in an old, haunted palace while serving in his new role. He soon becomes consumed with visions of past inhabitants – mostly beautiful women.
The story is especially sneaky in the way it shares its tale. Our narrator is actually disconnected from the main narrative but instead is told the story by the tax collector on a train. The haunted encounter becomes more than simply a ghost story or even a meditation on past lives. Framed as it is, the story stands as a proving ground of sorts for religion.
And that’s quite a trick on Tagore’s part.
The selection:
As I sat down again, thinking it to be an illusion, I heard many footfalls, as if a large number of persons were rushing down the steps. A strange thrill of delight, slightly tinged with fear, passed through my frame, and though there was not a figure before my eyes, methought I saw a bevy of joyous maidens coming down the steps to bathe in the Susta in that summer evening. Not a sound was in the valley, in the river, or in the palace, to break the silence, but I distinctly heard the maidens’ gay and mirthful laugh, like the gurgle of a spring gushing forth in a hundred cascades, as they ran past me, in quick playful pursuit of each other, towards the river, without noticing me at all. As they were invisible to me, so I was, as it were, invisible to them. The river was perfectly calm, but I felt that its still, shallow, and clear waters were stirred suddenly by the splash of many an arm jingling with bracelets, that the girls laughed and dashed and spattered water at one another, that the feet of the fair swimmers tossed the tiny waves up in showers of pearl.
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