This is a short story about Mr. Shasmal who we find at the beginning of the story in a bungalow he rented for 3 days. He is served dinner by the servant that comes with renting the bungalow and during dinner, they talk about how they are in the middle of the forest and that Mr Shasmal shouldn't leave his door open at night. Just after dinner, though, Mr. Shasmal finds a dog in his room after he leaves the door unattended. He calls the servant but the dog is gone and everybody is thoroughly confused. A little later, the dog appeared in the corner again and he noticed another animal in the opposite corner of the room, a stripped cat. He remembers about one night years ago that he was angry and a cat yowling was really annoying him so he threw a large paperweight at the direction and it ended abruptly. The next day the neighbor's cat was found murdered. At that time he was scornful of people who considered killing animals murderers, like killing ants as a kid. A murdered dog was what he tried to remember now, in 1973 he remembered when he got a new car he was speeding and hit a dog and just kept going. Now, all the animals he had killed showed up in his room; snakes, and birds and cats, whims of cruelty. Soon, he heard footsteps. He knew who they were, they were his business partner who had turned into an enemy because he was against the way Mr. Shasmal ran their business and was going to file a report to the police, so Mr. Shasmal knew he had to take care of him. After he had shot him, he had gone straight to the bungalow. There was a knock on the door and Adheer, the business partner, spoke to him... In the end, it turned out that Mr. Shasmal had missed when he had shot Adheer and he had brought the police because he "decided this lunatic must be handed over to the police (279)."
I think that the guilt Mr Shasmal had gathered his whole life and had tried to bury was drawn out by his, what he thought, killing of Adheer. He had lied to himself his whole life that nothing could be earned by stray dogs or annoying cats. He also seems to be a distrubed person in some way because he was able easily revert to violence whenever things weren't going his way. In the beginning of the story, he had asked a funny question, if there were ghosts in the bungalow, but when he heard that there weren't it seemed he was too relieved for it to be a joke, but that was when the author hadn't told us about Adheer, so I wasn't able to understand it until after I had read. Mr Shasmal's guilt really does seem to be the main reason he hallucinated about all of the things he had killed while keeping us in the dark, which made this a very spooky title all the way until the end.
Ray, Satyajit, and Gopa Majumdar. The Best of Satyajit Ray. Trans. Gopa Majumdar. New York: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated, 2001.
2 comments:
That seems to be a very common practice in the media. Greedy buisness partners murdering the well intentioned store owner, or nearly killing them, like in oceans 13
Poor guy. This sort of reminds me of the Edgar Poe stories, with death and reassurance of the madman's sanity is a key theme. I really can't even comprehend someone like this outside of stories-- just think of what their childhood would have to be like to be so violent-oriented. (but that's if you believe humans aren't naturally violent-oriented, or get it bred out of them by society, like I do) Anyway, very much congradulations for finishing the book-- I have never been able to deal with horror stories and people I loathe to understand. The motivations of these characters just strikes a chord, and you hear the matching note inside of you and freak out because YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BE A MADMAN. Thus. Poor Mr. Shasmal.
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