Popular Indian author Ruskin Bond Saturday said though he has not personally seen a single
ghost in real life, he can hear and feel their presence.
Bond, who has written the hugely popular 'Ghost Stories from the Raj', 'Dust on the Mountains' and 'A Season of Ghosts' said, "My ghosts are pretty gentle and harmless. I was once told by a 9-year-old girl that she read my ghost stories, but she was not scared enough. She asked me can't I make them more frightening?
"I said I could not," he said at the Tata Steel Kolkata Literary Meet here.
Speaking of his 'ghostly' experience, the 84-year-old author said, "I live in a very old cottage (in Mussoorie) and my bedroom is joined by a small sitting room, where none sleeps at night. But in the middle of the night, I hear people talking - though I can't make out what they say.
"I get up, switch on the light and see nobody there. Then I switch off the lights and go back to sleep. Then I see someone tucking up my blanket - a very motherly and maternal kind of ghost," he said to peals of laughter from the audience at the Victoria Memorial lawns here.
Bond has written a number of novellas, essays, poems and children's books besides over 500 short stories and articles.
He said though a few of his ghost stories had been filmed for web series, he finds it difficult to watch them as he is "technologically ignorant".
To another question, Bond said he had read several ghost stories by director-writer Satyajit Ray and also saw some of the films on Ray's fictional sleuth 'Feluda'.
Bond, who read a lot of Agatha Christie and detective stories of other writers since he was 10-years-old, said he would love to write a detective story himself.
To a question from the audience that why a cop always comes up as a "buffoon" in detective tales, the writer said, "I guess an average person has some sort of ingrained resentment against the police. Hence, writers pander to them.
"But policemen are not buffoons by any stretch of imagination," he added.
Director Aniruddha Roy Choudhury, who filmed 'Overcoat'--a ghost story written by Bond-- for a web series, said he wanted to make a ghost story, but ended up making a love story.
"Pink" fame Choudhary is also helming three other episodes for the web series, along with V K Prakash, based on Bond's stories 'The Ghost in the Garden', 'The Wind on Haunted Hill' and 'Wilson's Bridge'.
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