Review: There is a Ghost in My Room by Sanjoy K Roy
Though this debut book is subtitled “Living with the Supernatural” and features encounters with disembodied presences, it is really a paean to the author’s wife, family and close friends
The sub-genre of ‘memoir’ writing within the larger genre of non-fiction has become quite popular in India in the last decade or so. Biographies, memoirs and historical non-fiction now flood the market — and according to publishing sources, are very popular. It is in this light, that I contextualize There is a Ghost in My Room by Sanjoy K Roy, his debut book.
We already publicly know Roy as an entrepreneur of the arts, a managing director of Teamwork Arts, which produces over 30 acclaimed performing arts, visual arts and literary festivals across 40 cities in countries such as Australia, Canada, Egypt, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, UK and USA; including the world’s largest literary gathering: the annual Jaipur Literature Festival. He is also a keen thespian, a philanthropist and a trustee with the Salaam Baalak Trust that works for the upliftment of street children.
But Roy, as a writer? He often asks fellow writers these days, “How do you guys write book after book. Writing one is so difficult.” He said that he wrote the bulk of this book on long-haul flights (which is his only “me or down time”). Intriguingly, his book carries the subtitle: “Living with the Supernatural”.
So where are the ghosts here? Do you have to really see to believe them, or can we trust our imagination for them to be true? Do witches (in a Wiccan sense) and ghosts exist, or are they only figments of our imaginary landscape? What is real, what is virtual? These are some of the questions that Roy explores.
The book is not necessary about finding answers to these vexing conundrums, but more about accepting them as a parallel part of our psyche and being at peace with them. The Freudian model of ‘Ego, Super Ego and Id’ maybe just modern western classification our own sub-continental world of ghosts — that of bhoot-pret, of duality — white/black, Durga/Kali, Brahma/Vishnu, aakash/pataal, and more.
“I am neither mystic nor sceptic, neither soothsayer nor steeped in the occult. But the supernatural and the otherworldly are realities for me. … [They] explore different dimensions of existence and embrace the miracles of daily life,” Roy writes. “The universe is an enigma. We know very little about the world outside and even less about our own abilities to communicate with the other world; but ESP is a reality, as is the notion of sixth sense or instinct. It’s instinct that has led me to take most of my decisions: from making friends and engaging in relationships to working with business partners and accepting projects — and sometimes saying a firm ‘no’ to what appeared to be ‘a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity’. In most cases, these decisions have stood me in good stead!
Over the years, the paranormal has blended into our lives, enhanced by [his wife] Puneeta’s own experimentation with the occult and her understanding of healing energies. I have seen, sensed and interacted with otherworldly forces and have encountered the supernatural in many forms: spirits, spooks, eerie presences, an oppressive feeling of dread, a premonition, as well as being protected from many a danger by the unknown.
Spooks don’t necessarily jump out at you in the most expected of places. I haven’t chanced upon a ghost or a ghoul in the Valley of the Kings or Queens, in the Pyramids of Giza, at the Temple of Thebes or the caves of Cappadocia, but I have experienced them in more ordinary settings: in a vacant plot of land, on a tree outside the bedroom window, at home or on a riverbank. While I pretend to take these in my supposedly cool stride, I still jump out of my skin in terror when faced with an unexpected and uninvited apparition. My stories are my reality — or certainly an interpretation of events that Puneeta and I and our larger circle of family and friends have experienced.”
The last line is crucial to deconstruct. There is a Ghost in My Room is really paean to his wife Puneeta, his family and close friends. His loyalty to them comes out in this book with clarity and sincerity. I remember savouring the marvellous Bengali movie from a few years ago, Bhooter Bhobishoth (Ghost’s Future). In that film, the director cleverly inflects the dialogues delivered by the ghosts with a formal, poetic and stylised speech — in iambic pentameter, no less. While the mortals of the earth spoke in plain prose. I feel Roy also obliquely uses that trope (consciously or otherwise) in an understated manner. The ghosts in Roy’s book are not to be messed with, but treated with respect.
“The first spirit Sanjoy Roy encountered was one that haunted his ancestral house in Calcutta; he was five then. A few years later, the otherworldly made its presence felt again in his parents’ sprawling bungalow in Lutyens’ Delhi,” the jacket blurb reveals. “Over the decades that followed, he and his family and friends have come across a variety of apparitions, spectres and phantoms in diverse locations both in India and abroad. Some of these beings are benign or at most mischievous, but others — lost, disturbed souls — are angrier and have to be placated.”
Written in an accessible free-flowing conversational prose style — There is a Ghost in My Room records Roy’s rich life and career in a way that is never humdrum; but always lively, energetic, raw and sometimes even moving. It is equally a travelogue — full of varied adventures, encounters, illusions, delusions, visitations — one that will delight the readers with its infectious irony and wry wit.
Sudeep Sen’s last book, Anthropocene, (‘Book 1’ of ‘The Eco Trilogy’) was awarded the Rabindranath Tagore Literature Prize, and won The Wise Owl Literary Award. ‘Book 2’, Red, appears in January 2026. www.sudeepsen.org