Detective fiction has always held irresistible charm for most book lovers, but much more so for the Bengali reader. The Bengali gene, it seems, needs to devour vast quantities of murder mysteries, and while writers of timeless appeal like Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie continue to rule supreme, home-grown sleuths hold parallel sway. Ask any Kolkata Bengali who his/her favourite detective is and chances are the answer will either be Satyajit Ray’s Feluda or Saradindu Bandhopadhyay’s Byomkesh Bakshi; two detectives who have stood the test of time and whose popularity appears to be growing in direct proportion to their biological ages!
Satyajit Ray’s iconic creation, Pradosh C. Mitter, Feluda to his companions and admirers, turns 50 this year and, being a beloved member of every Bengali family, there is much reason to rejoice. Editor and curator Boria Majumdar chooses to celebrate the half-century milestone of his favourite sleuth with Feluda @ 50 — a compilation of essays, conversations, reminiscences and interviews, the book is a treasure-chest of information.
The photographs featured in the book are particularly precious and include sketches and illustrations by Ray and a facsimile reproduction of the first Feluda story as it appeared in the magazine Sandesh, in 1965. There are five essays by five writers and each one tackles a different facet of Ray and his literary creation.
Novelist-journalist Indrajit Hazra’s delightful piece traces his growing up years in the company of Bantul, a muscular “un-intellectual” cartoon character gracing the pages of a popular children’s magazine. His excitement is palpable even now as he writes about the arrival of “a sharp young man not averse to action” — Feluda’s entry into the collective Bengali psyche via Sandesh.
Ray’s sketches for the sartorial make-up of Feluda for the film version of Sonar Kella.
Both characters, according to Hazra, were a riposte to the coloniser’s viewpoint that Bengali men were a sissified lot. Making an appearance at a time when American super-heroes in their coloured tights were nowhere on the horizon for hormonal adolescents, the niche was filled beautifully by the tall, handsome, Charminar-smoking detective and his colourful entourage. Feluda arrived at a time when Ray, writes Hazra, was getting increasingly uneasy about the delusional self-imaging of the Bengali middle-class, as well as “with his natural distaste for the populist, the garish, that somewhere in his mind, slid down to the all-too-visible lumpen”.
Delving deeper, he analyses Feluda as essentially representing the ability to maintain an equal distance from the ossified bhadrolok (cultured man) and the rampaging chhotolok (lumpen elements). Feluda’s stories were defined as much by the supporting characters as the central one and both Boria Majumdar and professor of history, Rochona Majumdar, agree that Topshe (Feluda’s young cousin and chronicler), is often more interesting than the protagonist.
“There is no Feluda without Topshe,” declares Rochona Majumdar roundly, while Boria Majumdar firmly says that “Lalmohan babu is not a sidekick, but a co-hero.” Five decades down the line it is amazing to see Ray’s stories lend themselves to the multiple layers of interpretation. The absence of female characters in Feluda stories has always been mystifying; a close parallel being the world of Herge’s Tin Tin where besides Bianca Castafiore, one hardly encounters women.
This phenomenon is partially explained by renowned cinema scholar Sovon Tarafder in his brilliant essay, in which he offers the theory that Ray may have deliberately created the sanitised, wholesome, fictitious world of Feluda sans sex or romance, as a refuge for the young adult (and himself) from the harsh realities around (which were the subject of often Ray’s films); a sanctuary where both reader and author could retire in peace.
Veteran actor Soumitra Chatterjee shares a piquant anecdote: While he always suspected Feluda of being fashioned on himself and quizzed him on this, Ray’s reply was that it was commonly believed that Feluda was modelled on Soumitra!
Ray’s knack for word associations and origins (“osteo” from “asthi”, “widower” from “vidhava”), his knowledge of typefaces are brought out fascinatingly by writer Abhijit Bhaduri.
Boria Majumdar, in his editorial piece, is gushing in his adulation of Feluda.
His conversations with the author’s son, Sandip Ray, give insightful information about the challenges of adapting Feluda for film; his interviews with Soumitra Chatterjee, Sabyasachi Chakrabarty and Abir Chatterjee — the three screen Feludas — are no less enlightening. But what could have been a wonderfully riveting and informative book is somewhat marred by Majumdar frequently mistaking detective fiction for a Twenty20 cricket match.
Sides are drawn and it is clearly Feluda vs The Rest of The World’s detectives. Majumdar dismisses Holmes’ mood swings as “alienating”, Miss Marple as being “too old” to be a detective, Inspector Morse ineligible to be an idol due to being an “alcoholic”; Byomkesh’s friend/chronicler Ajit as “boring” and Wallander a “work-obsessed detective with no family to go back to”. So by the law of elimination, Feluda and Feluda alone stands out as the flawless and exemplary detective.
Strange, because zillions of readers love Holmes solely for his eccentricities, Poirot for his quirky “foreignness” and Miss Marple for her departure from the stereotypical; there are readers who swear they’d be bored to death by a straitjacketed detective lacking in idiosyncrasies.
Majumdar is acutely conscious of the figure of Byomkesh Bakshi towering in the background (evident in the frequent references to Saradindu Bandhopadhyay and his creation), often viewing him as something of a threat. There is a subtle but definite attempt to create a fault line between the two popular Bengali sleuths, a gentle nudge to the reader towards where his loyalties lie: “Saradindu Bandhopadhyay’s creation is no competition for the quintessentially Bengali brand in the world detective supermarket: Feluda.”
According to actor Soumitra Chatterjee, “I am not trying to suggest that Byomkesh isn’t popular — in fact at one point his popularity was equal to that of Felu’s — his reach is perhaps less than that of Feluda.” Both the statements, besides being highly debatable, are unlikely to go down well with Saradindu and Byomkesh admirers.
Majumdar seems to miss the point that while the dashing Feluda appeals to the adolescent in a reader, s/he might just turn to Byomkesh stories that resonate with human frailties, twisted psychology, love, lust, political turmoil and the zeitgeist of the 1950s. Multiple literary characters have always existed in a symbiotic space and it is childish to pit one against the other.
It is undeniable that cinematically Byomkesh Bakshi claims more national popularity than Feluda. While filmmaker Basu Chatterjee made Byomkesh a household name in 1993 with his televised serial on Doordarshan, Dibakar Banerjee’s recent interpretation, panned and loved in equal measure, reached the bhadralok detective to the remotest corners of the country. Added to that is that fact the at any given time there are Bengali movies with Byomkesh showing in Kolkata’s theaters simultaneously. A tough act for any other literary figure to follow.
Feluda has yet to taste cinematic success outside the Bengali community and one fervently hopes that some discerning filmmaker wakes up to the charisma of this timeless youth icon.
Kankana Basu is a Mumbai- based writer and the granddaughter of Saradindu Bandopadhyay, the creator of detective Byomkesh Bakshi
