ISC Prism- Indigo by Satyajit Ray
Themes
1. Indigo: Theme of Supernaturalism and Paranormal Activity
The supernatural elements can be used to create a certain mood in writing or to enhance the dramatic effect of a story. The supernatural elements can also be used as the reasoning behind the story and act as the theme it centres on creating a paranormal effect and a mystical experience for the readers.
Satyajit Ray is regarded as one of the India’s best horror story writer, as several of his works revolving around supernatural phenomena, spirits, ghost and other paranormal activities.
Ray’s Indigo is a gripping story of horror and suspense. It is a first person account of the haunting experience of the main character Aniruddha Bose, who has to spend an unplanned night in an old bungalow wherein he has to encounter an almost paranormal phenomena.
In this story, Aniruddha Bose, a modern and rational individual, experiences a series of uncanny events while staying in a Dak bungalow, which belonged to an indigo planter. That night Aniruddha experiences shocking changes and get transformed into the mind of an indigo tax collector. His body is completely changed. He is not his own self. He writes a letter in the voice of the English planter who died several years ago. He shoots the planter’s pet hound – Rex in a trance like state, but when he wakes up next morning, everything is back to normal.
All these strange events take place without any logical explanation, give this story a supernatural feel. The setting of the story is an eerie isolated Dak bungalow and the events happen on the significant date of the planter’s hundredth death anniversary i.e. 27th April 1868, all these contribute to the overall atmosphere of suspense and tension.
Bose’s experience challenge his rational beliefs and plunges him into an exploration of fear, the unknown and the intersection of reality and supernaturalism. Satyajit Ray masterfully combines all the elements of horror with curiosity that the reader can not escape from the story even after it ends.
2. Indigo: Theme of Loss of Control
One of the biggest themes in the story is that of being of conscious mind but not having control of one’s own body. Aniruddha Bose has been studying in the books, the role of ruthless and greedy indigo tax collectors and this goes even when he happens to sleep on the bed of this English indigo planter in the latter’s house. Aniruddha Bose has the being of conscious mind but no control of his body. At night he experienced a paranormal activity, he remembers all the details of his own things like his “wristwatch” on his left hand “was gone”, his “torch” “beside his pillow” was gone too even his “suitcase too had disappeared” which was kept underneath his bed. He had “gone to bed wearing a vest”, now he is wearing a “long sleeved silk shirt”.
He knew who he was, could remember every detail, yet he could not control his action. All his “limbs were acting of their own volition”. Surprisingly “Aniruddha Bose was perfectly aware of the change in identity”. But he didn’t know if the change was “permanent” or he can regain his “lost identity” anyway.
He feels that “some unseen force” made him “sit in the chair and pick up the pen” to write a letter. It is because his mind was in someone else’s body. In this way his emotions of helplessness prompted his action.
 3.Indigo : Theme of Shape – ShiftingÂ
The story “Indigo” also explore the theme of shape shifting, when Aniruddha Bose, started to notice more strange happenings within himself. He found his hands had become “pale” as if white wash from the wall got on to his hands. He had gone to bed wearing a “vest” while at this time he was wearing “a long sleeved silk shirt” with “narrow trousers and the socks”. Then he noticed that not only his complexion but “his features too had changed”.
He never possessed “a sharp nose”, nor “such thin lips or narrow chin”, his head is covered with wavy hair and his “sideburns” reached “below his ears“.
When he looked into the mirror, the person reflected in it was not him. By some ” devilish trick” he had become a nineteenth – century English Indigo planter with “a sallow complexion, blond hair and light eyes from which shone a strange mixture of hardness and suffering”. Even his voice was not his own and with the “unmistakable accent of an Englishman”.
He had been metamorphosed into the English indigo planter. His body was not acting of his own accord, yet his consciousness was that of Aniruddha Bose.
Although all these appears to be just a dream but it is more aligned with horror and paranormal activity because –
1. The conscious mind of Aniruddha Bose was in an entirely different body of an English indigo planter.
2. Aniruddha lying on the tax collector’s bed was, reliving the last moments of the Englishman, which truly happened in that room.
3. There is the significance of the time and date as all these events were happened exactly hundred years ago on 27th April, 1868.
Thus we can understand that Aniruddha was not really in the body of the tax collector but it was Aniruddha’s own body so it can not be called possession of the body.
  4.Indigo: Theme of Unsettled PastÂ
Another theme that comes out of Aniruddha’s night experience is that of an unrested soul and an unsettled past. Satyajit Ray masterfully portrayed the plight, anxiety and the confusion of the English tax collector’s very last moments by means of Aniruddha Bose. It is clear from his that night’s experience that the Englishman was not at all at peace in his last moments.
It is evident from his letter that the indigo tax collector’s soul was in a rattled state because of several reasons. The Englishman felt lonely as all his friends had left him to their country. He mentions – “Eric has made his escape. Percy and Tony too left earlier.” Even his wife Marry and his son Toby had died of Malaria.
Despite of repeated attacks of malaria, he could not leave this country because of his greed. he himself confessed that he was “greedier then” his companions, as he “couldn’t resist the lure of indigo”. The tax collector was lured by the lust of money. He could not go back to his his homeland because of his shady past as “he didn’t lead a blameless life” in England.
The Englishman knew that he was about to die in this “alien soil” but he wished he would be buried beside his wife and son’s grave.
He realized that he had treated the “natives” here so badly that nobody would “shed a tear” at his “passing away”.
The Englishman’s last action before his own suicide was shooting his beloved dog, Rex. His guilt for this action also became a cause for his soul’s rattled state.
All these feelings of loneliness, greed, regret, guilt and anxiety may have caused a permanent element of unrest in his spirit.