The police arrive promptly to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a young professor at Delhi University. In another story, a child surrenders her homely comfort and heads to the mountains above Kathmandu. At Kurseong, two young teachers suddenly go amiss, leaving the town awry. This brilliant compilation of original short stories by Yoshay Lama Lindblom grips the reader from start to finish and lands them in a realm replete with mortal actions and their immortal consequences.
Three stories that have stayed with me from the collection are:
Of Monsters and Men- Deals with an escaping murderer during the dark year was 1986
Unwished- Tragic, haunting, beautiful
In Her Shadow- Sibling rivalries hit me on a personal level. The contrast between the human darkness and the eternal light is poetic.
Horror is a compelling theme in the book. The story titled, ‘For Eternity’ especially kept me up through several nights because the setting of the Kurseong cemeteries and the “Chudail” was all too familiar. The author constantly delves into the space where life and death inter-change. The stories bring some conciliation to answer the rhetorical question, “what lies beyond death”?
But these Dark Tales from the Himalayas aren’t only for the sake of a thrilling experience. Many of these tales delve into the mythical beliefs, spiritual ideas, and practices prevalent in the Eastern Himalayan region. While the stories discuss ideas of unexplainable phenomena in the eternal dimension, they also subtly also bring out the darkness of the human world. Themes include greed, deceit, envy, homicide, and discrimination.
Some stories take inspiration from orally passed down folktales, which bring in a warm nostalgia while reading them. Suddenly I was a child listening to stories narrated over a winter bonfire in my Grandmother’s yard. For those that miss the carefree times of, “bhoot ko Katha bhanney” evenings, the author has given a gift worth cherishing.
More importantly, these stories preserve the oral folktales of the region, and through them also highlight the socio-cultural status quo of the Eastern Himalayas. Surreal happenings are seldom explainable and better left untampered. However, discussing the spiritual beliefs, geographical settings, ritual practices, and so on that have been passed down through these folktales, may help in the understanding of our evolution better and demystify ideas of exoticism.
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