Your mother is the famed Wiccan Ipsita Roy Chakraverti, so it’s fair to say you were born with it. Were you like the kid from the film ‘The Sixth Sense’?
You are right! I was like the child from ‘The Sixth Sense’! The only difference is, I wouldn’t always see negative things. I would see happy spirits and beings around me. Elemental orbs, spirit beings, people, pets. As a child, it brought me happiness and gave me a greater sense of the world.
Forgive us, but the first Wiccan related image that popped in our mind was from a horror film with spirits just waiting to kill humans.
I think Wicca has got a bad name in recent times with people trying to associate it with a lot of hogwash like candle magic and spells and strange things. It’s alright to indulge in these for a lark — they are good party games — but that is not what the real Wicca, as Ipsita teaches us in the Wiccan Brigade, is about. Spirits just need understanding and someone who is willing to listen.
But we thought Wiccan was unscientific?
Not at all! The western world is carrying out ground-breaking research into the world of the psychical. Universities in the UK, US and Germany are conducting research into the survival of the soul and coming forth with new evidence. Scientists like Dr Klaus Heinemann (a physicist who has worked with NASA, UCLA and Stanford) and Dr Miceal Ledwith (professor of Systemic Theology and member of the International Theological Commission) have done spirit photography, and captured glowing orbs on camera.
So what made you pen ‘Bhangarh...’?
Until now, no book has explored this genre besides Ipsita. Moreover, Indian spirit literature is either a ‘ghost story’ or a mythological or historical compilation. My book is more along the line of western thinking, sadly lacking in India. If you read it, you will see that I have blended the psychic with the scientific, historical, and esoteric lore.
We heard you did some orb photography of your own?
Yes! When I visited Bhangarh, we captured the same orb phenomena on camera – not on one, but on eight cameras. We are the first ones to go into the Orb Phenomena in India.
We heard that a certain mall was spooked enough to try and stop the publishing of the book? Details please.
It started this April when South City Mall Kolkata intimidated the first publishers (Alchemy) into withdrawing the publication of the book. The mall had not read my story, which was based on my inference from newspaper clippings detailing certain tragic accidents which had occurred there in recent times. The clippings had named the mall, and the management had no objections to national dailies. However, they wanted to stop the publication of my book. Alchemy even sent an apology to the mall along with notice of their withdrawing the book. (Later, the mall management even admitted to the press that they had not read the story.) When Life Positive Books took up this book, they did so completely. The mall had again written to them (Life Positive), but this time, the book was supported fully by the publishers.
How did this episode make you feel?
I have a right to my opinion, to freedom of expression while every reader has a right to read and think for themselves. When the book was withdrawn under pressure from the mall, this movement, ‘right to read’ garnered tremendous support. I was deluged by people writing in to me, in support.
Now that the book is out, what has been the best compliment that you have received till now?
When Clifton S Chas, American author and historian, who specialises in pagan studies mentioned me in his blog.