The quintessential Bengali adda over a cup of cha gave birth to a book of strange tales by childhood friends Diptarag Bhattacharjee and Indraneel Ganguli. Friend Gautam Lahiri, too, had his contributions to The Uncanny by DIG Tales (Diptarag, Indraneel, Gautam) published by NotionPress.
The friends from Kolkata now live outside the city. While Bhattacharjee is transitioning to business consultancy and entrepreneurship, Lahiri is vice-president of C-Zentrix — both in Gurgaon — and Ganguli is an independent full-time marketing consultant based out of Hyderabad.
My Kolkata caught up with the three buddies-cum-authors at Chapter 2 on a bright yet chilly winter afternoon to discuss the book.
The conception
A simple conversation among friends became the starting point of the book. Narrating the inception, Diptarag Bhattacharjee said, “We do not stay in Kolkata. We have homes in Kolkata which are actually vacation homes for us. We come during Durga Puja or Christmas. It happened one fine morning. I went to Indraneel’s place and over a cup of tea, I recounted a few of my experiences which I would say were unnatural. What happened over one cup of tea went on to become five cups of tea. Then one day, Gautam also joined. He narrated a few experiences. That’s how it was conceived during the COVID period over the phone and Zoom calls. Once the stories were frozen, Indraneel started giving a graphical representation to the stories.’’
“It’s like team work. We were the owners of the stories. Indraneel could visualize. Why not marry those concepts and come up with a unique solution which will be appealing to the mass? We tried to cross the line of text and stories and add uncanny, something unexplained, something which is visible in the darker sides, it will further interest people.’’ added Gautam.
All about 'The Uncanny'
The Uncanny takes the reader on a horror-coaster ride from Kolkata’s National Library to Chinsurah’s graveyard; from hotels in the US to post-colonial remnants of Murshidabad. The dozen illustrated stories in the book not only border on personal narration but also on local legends, colonial trivia and more. Some of the stories named Shiver in Shibpur, Dutch Courage or Sighting at Goa take the reader travelling all over the city, country and even cross-country. While the stories have been narrated by Diptarag and Gautam, the illustrations are by Indraneel. Interestingly, much of the narratives are from personal vacations or official trips.
A page from the book
Towards a visual world
Asked about the visuals, Indraneel who is an amateur artist commented, “What sticks in my mind are visuals, not so much words. When he (Diptarag) was narrating the story, I was actually seeing the visuals forming. If it can form in my mind why not do an experiment and try and see if this book
can be done in a narrative fashion with both texts and visuals. We would also like to address the audience of the future. We believe that as days progress, the world is going to gravitate towards visuals. It’s much easier to comprehend. There is a challenge of drawing or illustrating for ghost stories because we have to make it slightly macabre and different from the others."
Personal favorites
For the Kolkata boys who now reside in Gurgaon and Hyderabad, the common favourite narrative was the National Library sighting. That apart, Indraneel and Gautam liked The Murshidabad Mystery about Neelkuthi, an erstwhile Indigo planter’s residence; Diptarag chose Night at the Palace Hotel which took place in Bhopal.
Drawing inspiration
Pictorial narration of an episode
Which authors and works inspire the debut authors? Indraneel said “Speaking for visuals, Edgar Allan Poe is perhaps the father of macabre. Then, Ruskin Bond for sure and Satyajit Ray’s stories around the unnatural influenced us quite a bit.’’ He also added about his love for movies. “We are big fans of Alfred Hitchcock. In fact, when Hitchcock was asked what is his USP, he had answered, I want to make my audience uncomfortable.’’ For Diptarag, too, it was “Ray and the films of Hitchcock. A story which stands out for me by Ray is called Fritz.” Gautam picked up “Frederick Forsyth, he is a fantastic writer with very detailed background; Jefferey Archer for his brilliant explanations and Jim Corbett, the way he has depicted the stories of wildlife.’’
The OTT boom
Indraneel pointed out the interesting junction of narration and OTT which is merging more often than not today. He said, “We believe that there has been an explosion of content on OTT platforms and that the future of films is bright. We don’t know yet but we are sensing that this market is very bright for short movie formats, especially on OTT. If ghost as a genre is attracting so many eyeballs. It’s going to grow.’’
