A strange attachment and other stories

Literary form: Literary work
First published: 1984
Literary period: —
Region / tradition: India
Original language: Bengali/Bangla

What happens in this work?

This 1984 English-language collection, translated by Phyllis Granoff, gathers 27 stories by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay. Rather than following one hero through a single plot, it moves among different people and situations in Bengal: children testing limits, adults facing hardship, elderly people confronting isolation, and workers trying to keep their dignity.

The lead story, “A Strange Attachment,” is a ghost story narrated by a cook who has lost his job. Nibaran Chakrabarti offers him food, shelter, and the chance to care for an almost abandoned house surrounded by jungle. What first feels like extraordinary good luck becomes frightening as the narrator notices a mysterious woman, sounds from locked rooms, and signs that the house may be changing his desires.

Other stories widen the collection’s view of social life. “Little Uma” centers on an unhappy, difficult child; “Dalu Gets in Trouble” follows two boys through mischief, fear, and pride; “Grandma Drab Goes to Benares” questions whether a supposedly superior religious city can replace home; and “Canvasser Krishnalal” follows a medical salesman after he loses his job.

Read the collection as a series of close observations rather than as a book to rush through. The stories repeatedly ask what people need in order to live with self-respect: food, work, companionship, belonging, freedom, or a sense that they matter to someone.

What was happening when it was written?

Bandyopadhyay wrote in Bengali, and this edition brings his stories into English through Phyllis Granoff’s translation. The collection’s settings include rural villages as well as urban connections such as Kolkata and Benares. Its people live amid unequal access to money, employment, health, education, and social standing. That background matters because material need is never merely scenery: hunger makes the narrator of “A Strange Attachment” vulnerable to an offer that seems generous, while job loss shapes Krishnalal’s sense of worth. At the same time, the book does not reduce its characters to social examples. It gives attention to routines, jokes, weather, domestic labor, and private longings. Supernatural elements therefore feel more disturbing because they enter an ordinary, recognizable world.

Who matters, and why?

The unnamed cook-narrator in “A Strange Attachment”

The narrator begins as practical and hungry after being unfairly dismissed from his job. His first-person voice makes readers share his reasonable explanations for each strange event. Yet his pleasure in free food, space, and authority gradually becomes a trap, showing how need and comfort can weaken judgment.

Nibaran Chakrabarti

Nibaran appears helpful: he feeds the traveler and offers him a place to live. But his urgent instructions, his reaction to the woman near the gourds, and his warning not to trust villagers make him difficult to read. He represents hospitality that may also conceal knowledge and responsibility.

Grandma Drab

In “Grandma Drab Goes to Benares,” the elderly woman is sent toward a city that her son considers more respectable and religious. Her boredom, homesickness, and attachment to Mungli the cow make clear that belonging is not created by status or religious display; it grows from lived relationships.

Canvasser Krishnalal

Krishnalal’s loss and eventual recovery of his sales job place work at the center of personal identity. The story treats employment as more than income: it is tied to pride, public standing, and the ability to feel useful. Its sharp ending gives that pride an ironic, almost proverbial force.

Big ideas to track

Need, comfort, and dependence

The title story begins with unemployment and hunger, so the cook understandably sees Nibaran’s house as rescue. The house supplies rice, fruit, tools, water, and freedom from ordinary labor. But the more comfortable he becomes, the less he wants to leave. The story turns dependence into horror without blaming him for being poor.

Home versus prestige

“Grandma Drab Goes to Benares” contrasts the social idea of a superior city with the grandmother’s actual emotional life. Her son’s plan may look dutiful, but it ignores what she values. Her longing for familiar people, places, and even Mungli shows that a home cannot be measured only by religious reputation or status.

Dignity under social pressure

Across the collection, poverty, illness, caste, job insecurity, and family expectations shape what choices people can make. Bandyopadhyay’s social criticism is often indirect: he lets readers notice how a dismissal, a child’s neglect, or an older person’s displacement affects pride. This quiet method makes ordinary injustice harder to dismiss.

The uncertain border between ordinary and supernatural

In “A Strange Attachment,” kitchen work, vegetable vines, locked rooms, and village gossip exist beside unexplained water, scents, laughter, and ghostly figures. The narrator repeatedly tries to explain away what he experiences. That uncertainty matters because the house’s power works through both fear and desire, not through a simple monster attack.

How the writing works

Plainspoken first-person narration

The lead story sounds like a person telling an experience after the fact. The narrator reports practical details—food, chores, property, gossip—before recognizing the danger around him. Because readers understand his motives and hear his rationalizations, the final revelation feels unsettling rather than sudden or artificial.

Sensory setting

Heat, jungle growth, fruit trees, water, moonlight, darkness, household sounds, and an unfamiliar fragrance make place active in these stories. In the ghost story especially, the overgrown house seems less like a neutral building than a force pressing in on the narrator. Sensory detail builds atmosphere without needing constant explanation.

Contrast and tonal shifts

The collection moves among humor, childhood mischief, family pain, social satire, and the uncanny. Even within “A Strange Attachment,” the narrator’s delight at having room and food sits beside growing dread. These shifts prevent village life from becoming picturesque; it contains pleasure, danger, embarrassment, tenderness, and loss at the same time.

Moments to notice while you read

Beginning of “A Strange Attachment”: the cook loses his position and walks hungry through the villages

What to notice: Notice how hunger, unjust dismissal, and physical exhaustion make an offer of food and shelter seem almost miraculous.

Why it matters: This opening establishes that the narrator’s later attachment is not foolishness alone. His economic vulnerability makes the house’s comfort emotionally persuasive and helps explain why he dismisses warnings.

Early in “A Strange Attachment”: Nibaran gives instructions about lamps and the kitchen

What to notice: Watch for details that seem overly specific, especially the repeated concern about carrying light after sunset.

Why it matters: The instructions create suspense before the narrator understands their purpose. They also show the gap between Nibaran’s alarm and the cook’s ordinary, practical interpretation of the house.

Middle of “A Strange Attachment”: the narrator notices the woman near the gourd vines

What to notice: Compare the narrator’s casual description of the woman with Nibaran’s immediate shock and insistence that she cannot be there.

Why it matters: This is the first clear clash between what the narrator thinks he sees and what others know. It starts the story’s larger question: is he being deceived, protected, or drawn in?

Middle of “A Strange Attachment”: the narrator enjoys being master of the property

What to notice: Pay attention to his satisfaction in having fruit, rooms, tools, and freedom after years of difficult work.

Why it matters: His feeling of ownership is the emotional center of the title. The house does not hold him only through terror; it offers him a version of security and power he has rarely possessed.

Late in “A Strange Attachment”: strange sounds and figures appear while the narrator keeps finding explanations

What to notice: Track each attempt to call the events a dream, a mistake, villagers’ tricks, or a result of fear.

Why it matters: His explanations show a mind trying to preserve ordinary reality. They also increase the irony, since readers can see that his attachment itself may be evidence of the house’s influence.

Ending of “A Strange Attachment”: the shopkeeper explains what happened to earlier residents

What to notice: Notice that the warning arrives after the narrator has already spent time becoming comfortable, isolated, and unwilling to depart.

Why it matters: The delayed explanation changes the meaning of the earlier scenes. The ending makes the title literal and frightening: the supernatural danger is a desire to remain, even when remaining destroys a person.

While reading “Grandma Drab Goes to Benares”

What to notice: Focus on the difference between the son’s idea of a better life and Grandma Drab’s own memories, habits, and attachments.

Why it matters: The story complicates an easy definition of care. It asks whether moving an older person to a respected place is loving if the move ignores that person’s need for familiarity and companionship.

Questions to test your understanding

Answer in your own words. Then point to a specific moment in the work that supports your answer.

Why does the cook initially interpret the villagers’ warnings about Nibaran’s house as an attempt to protect their access to its fruit and vegetables? What does this interpretation reveal about his needs?
How does the repeated image of light or a lamp change from a practical household detail into a sign of danger in “A Strange Attachment”?
At what point does the narrator’s relief at escaping hard labor become an unhealthy attachment? Identify the details that show this change.
Why might Nibaran offer the cook such generous access to the house and land while also telling him not to listen to anyone else?
How does the mysterious woman near the gourd vines connect the domestic world of cooking and gardening to the story’s supernatural threat?
In “Grandma Drab Goes to Benares,” what does Grandma Drab’s longing for Mungli suggest about what she considers a meaningful home?
Compare the effects of job loss on the cook in the title story and on Krishnalal. How does each story connect work with pride?
The collection includes children, unemployed workers, an elderly grandmother, and supernatural presences. How does this range of figures create a fuller picture of Bengali social life?

The K.Jung School of Standardized Review (KSSR)