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Six wry, haunting stories from Tapan Bandyopadhyay, where colonial-era bungalows, bureaucratic hierarchies, and old ghosts linger long after their time. Sharp, atmospheric, and quietly unforgettable.
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| Author(s) | |
|---|---|
| Translator(s) | |
| Language | English |
| Format | Paperback |
| Pages | 132 |
| ISBN-13 | 9789347783029 |
Six Stories
by Tapan Bandyopadhyay
In this wry, atmospheric collection, Tapan Bandyopadhyay turns to the space where bureaucracy meets the uncanny — old colonial bungalows, inherited hierarchies, and the ghosts (literal and otherwise) that linger in institutions long after the people who built them are gone. Six stories that move between dry humor and quiet unease, tracing lives caught in the gears of power, memory, and history.
The opening story, The District Magistrate’s Bungalow, sets the tone: a young orderly named Madna is transferred to the grand, empty residence of a district magistrate awaiting his successor. Alone in the sprawling colonial-era mansion — its wide verandas and old furniture steeped in stories of Lord Clive and forgotten tragedies — Madna finds himself haunted less by ghosts than by the institution’s own long, uneasy memory. When the aging orderly Dasarath returns, his matter-of-fact tales of the bungalow’s spirits blur the line between local legend and the quiet violence of colonial-era hierarchy.
From there, the collection widens its lens — through Rubai Is Still Here, The Prime Minister’s India, The Poetry of Hadiya Land, Homer, and Two Children in a War Zone — each story carrying Bandyopadhyay’s signature blend of satire, melancholy, and sharp social observation. Power, memory, and the residue of history recur throughout, rendered with a storyteller’s eye for the absurd within the ordinary.
Precise, understated, and quietly haunting, Six Stories is a collection that finds the extraordinary tucked inside bureaucratic routine — proof that the past never quite leaves the rooms it once occupied.
Tapan Bandyopadhyay (born 7th June 1947) is an eminent Bengali author and poet with a long career of over four decades. He began his literary career as a poet and later went on to write novels and short stories. Bandyopadhyay has 150 books to his credit. His literary oeuvre consists of over 50 novels, over 50 mystery novels, 400 short stories, 20 books for children, 11 books of poetry, and works on travel and essays, among other genres. He created a Bengali lady detective character Goenda Gargi. Bandyopadhyay was awarded the Bankim Smriti Purashkar, the highest award given by the Government of West Bengal, in 2002 for his novel Nodi Mati Aranya. He won the BFNJ Award in 2005 in the best story category for the film Mohul Boner Serenga. Bandyopadhyay was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Translation Award in 2019 for translating Sitakant Mahapatra’s Odia poetry collection Bharatbarsha. In 2022, he won the Sahitya Akademi award for his novel Birbal. Among his other awards and accolades are the Sahityasetu Award in 1993, the Sopan Award in 1995, the Amritalok Award in 2001, the felicitation in Dhaka and Tangail, Bangladesh in 2002, the Manjush Dasgupta Award in 2003, the Panchajanya Award in 2003, the Pratima Smriti Award in 2005, the Roygunakar Bharatchandra Award in 2005, the Krittibash Award in 2005, the Nityananda Smriti Award in 2005, the Sailajananda Smriti Award in 2005, the Rupashi Bangla Award in 2009, the Tribitta Award in 2010, the Dinesh Chandra Smriti Award in 2011, the Dwiralap Sahitya Samman from Silchar in 2011, and the Tarashankar Smriti Award in 2011. He was an invitee at the 17th International Book Fair in Beijing where he delivered two lectures. Bandyopadhyay worked as a bureaucrat and is a retired Secretary of Shishu Kishore Akademy, Government of West Bengal. He lives in Kolkata and continues to write.
Nishi Pulugurtha is an academic, author, poet and translator. She is the Head and Associate Professor of the Department of English at Brahmananda Keshab Chandra College, Kolkata, with 13 books to her credit apart from several academic publications, including the edited volume Literary Representations of Pandemics, Epidemics and Pestilence (Routledge, 2023). Her works include a book of travel writing, Out in the Open; an edited volume on travel writing, Across and Beyond; collections of poetry, The Real and the Unreal and Other Poems, Raindrops on the Periwinkle, Looking Poems, Voices and Vision (co-edited); short stories, The Window Sill, Framed; an edited volume of short stories The Virasat Anthology of Short Stories; and a volume of essays, Lockdown Times. Her most recent book is a co-edited volume of translated short stories from Indian languages written by women on the subject of mental health, Bandaged Moments (Niyogi Books, 2025). A book on food, a fourth volume of poems, and an edited volume of translated Telugu short stories, are forthcoming. She writes on Alzheimer’s disease and is a Member on the Advisory Board of Alzheimer’s and Related Disorders Society of India. She is also the Secretary of Intercultural Poetry and Performance Library, Kolkata and was the Chief Editor of Antonym Magazine for 2025.
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