Five Ghontological scribbles

Abstract

Abstract The Ghanada stories, a landmark series in Bengali science fiction, authored by Premendra Mitra (1904–1988; poet, short story writer, filmmaker) between mid-forties and mid-eighties, often feature intriguing, single worded titles like Insect, Hole or Phial. One is drawn precisely to the incredulity of the contrast between these apparently banal objects and their supposed role in events and process of historical significance, often rendered with a strong counterfactual flavour: a contrast that serves well as the narrative fulcrum of these ‘tall tales’. However, one could also read these stories as sites where these objects are actively foregrounded as objects in themselves, as artefacts arising as dense nodes in a web of networks and actants. Playing with the neologism of ‘Ghontology’, this piece of speculative fiction is guided by the image of a room where one could potentially listen to a conversation between objects that frequent the Ghanada universe: a wonder cabinet where phials and umbrellas jostle with dormant volcanoes and green algae. Sitting in this room, the reverberations and feedback loops might also tempt the reader to reflect on monads and hydraulics in diamond mines.