Mehfil 6 - Bhoot Prayt: Ghostly Encounters
A quirky episode on ghosts, hauntings and horror on this week’s Mehfil. Two women writers from India and Pakistan interrogate ghostly encounters and how to write about them. Host Amrita Ghosh welcomes Jessica Faleiro from Goa (India) and Sehyr Mirza from Lahore (Pakistan) to explore the writing of ghosts, hauntings and horror on a personal level as well as with regards to collective traumas such as the Partition or colonial histories. The writers speak of childhood experiences with haunted houses, ghostly sightings and collective psychosomatic experiences. They reflect on whether stories of paranormal afterlives create narratives of resistance in the present. Faleiro speaks about her “real” ghostly experience in her grandmother’s ancestral house that sent her off on a journey to write about these topics. Mirza also recalls her grandmother's poignant and moving tales from before the Partition as well as horrifying stories during the period of Partition that inspired Mirza to write. Both writers discuss the rich repertoire of the horror genre within the South Asian context starting with the simple traditions of families and friends gathering around to narrate spooky stories.
Ghosh asks the writers about their books. Faleiro’s book Afterlife: Ghost Stories from Goa excavates Goa’s rich history by weaving in the Spanish Inquisition and Portuguese colonialism through paranormal encounters set within the present. Mirza talks about her edited anthology titled The Other in the Mirror: Stories from India and Pakistan in which she takes on the ghost of the Partition that continues to haunt people and that still creates fear of the “other" by continuing to maintain borders and divisions. She also speaks of her own story within that collection, one that instrumentalizes haunting for political symbolism. Faleiro and Mirza also point to new trends in literature and films within the horror genre in India and Pakistan and the possibilities opened up by the rise of digital media. Lastly, the conversations moves to ask if scary stories set us free from our fears or whether they simply serve to make us more afraid.
Jessica Faleiro’s fiction, poetry, essays and travel pieces have been published in Asia Literary Review, Forbes, Indian Quarterly, IndiaCurrents, Coldnoon, Joao Roque Literary Journal, Mascara Literary Review, Muse India and the Times of India as well as in various anthologies. Her first book Afterlife: Ghost stories from Goa (2012) is about a Goan family and their ‘ghostly’ encounters and her second book The Delicate Balance of Little Lives (2018) is a collection of interlinked stories about five middle-class Goan women trying to cope with loss. She won the Joao Roque Literary Award ‘Best in Fiction 2017 for her short story ‘Unmatched.’ Faleiro is currently the Commissioning Editor for the Joao Roque Literary Journal. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Kingston University, UK, talks about creativity, and runs creative writing workshops.
Sehyr Mirza is a journalist and creative writer based in Lahore, Pakistan. Her work has appeared in The BBC, Deutsche Welle, Dawn, The News International, Outlook India, Huffington Post, The Wire, Pakistan Today and other outlets. She is the editor of an anthology titled The Other in the Mirror: Stories from India and Pakistan published by Yoda Press in India and Folio Books in Pakistan. Mirza has also received fellowships at Atlantic Council, Washington DC, The Swedish Institute and she has been a visiting fellow at Rajeev Circle Fellowship, San Francisco. She was the recipient of Women Waging Peace Award by Kroc Institute for International Peace and Justice in 2019 and holds a degree in English Literature from Goldsmiths, University of London.
Amrita Ghosh is Assistant Professor of English, specializing in South Asian literature at the University of Central Florida. She is the co-editor of Tagore and Yeats: A Postcolonial Reenvisioning (Brill 2022) and Subaltern Vision: A Study in Postcolonial Indian English Text (Cambridge Scholars 2012). Her book Kashmir’s Necropolis: New Literature and Visual Texts is forthcoming with Lexington Books. She is the co-founding editor of Cerebration, a bi-annual literary journal.
To inaugurate our Mehfil which means a celebratory gathering in Urdu, we asked Uday Bansal to compose a small poem for us. It was read out by Amrita Ghosh at the start of the program.
Tumhaari taal se betaal / Duniya tumhaari shaunq se ghafil hai / Taqaluf Chhod bhi do / Aao yeh tumhaari hi mehfil hai
This roughly translates as "cast off your inhibitions and come join our celebrations."
We want to thank Bansal who writes poetry in Hindustani, the confluence of Hindi and Urdu. Bansal has performed at the world's largest Urdu Literature festival Jashn-e-Rekhta in 2022 and has given a TEDx talk titled "Zabaan-e-Urdu" where he explores the misconceptions about the Urdu language and its relevance in today's times.
