Feluda @ 50

by Boria Majumdar

  Also, Lalmohan-babu has a flamboyant streak that nicely sets off Feluda’s pragmatism. He buys a Japanese horn for his car that Feluda begins to detest, tailors an orange suit in Hong Kong in the little time that they are there and picks up a colourful Nepali cap in Kathmandu. His choice of weaponry, bhojali (dagger) in Sonar Kella, smoke bomb in Kailashe Kelenkari, boomerang in Baksha Rahasya all point to his penchant for drama. The names of his novels, Saharay Shiharan and Hondurase Hahakar are further proof of this. Behind his flamboyance, however, he is the archetypal Bengali middle-class bhadrolok. Who else would wear a ‘monkey cap’ in Hazaribagh – as Lalmohan-babu so daringly does in Chinnamastar Abhishap – citing the possibility of catching a cold.

  There are two ancillary points that shore up the Lalmohan-babu charisma. When Feluda suggests, in Baksha Rahasya, that it is expensive to travel to Shimla, Lalmohan-babu very politely reminds him that he has twenty-seven bestselling novels to his credit. There is a veiled assertion (meant without any malice) that, despite all of Feluda’s success, Lalmohan-babu still earns more. Watson and Hastings are unlikely to make such an assertion. Again, it is Lalmohan-babu’s car that the trio always uses, something Feluda is totally comfortable with. Jatayu often shares a room with Feluda and Topshe when they travel. He is more family member than friend, and that’s what makes the bonding between the three special. Their repartee, from the very beginning, is affectionate and indulgent. In Sonar Kella (the movie), when Jatayu seeks permission to ask a question on the way to Jaisalmer, all Feluda says is, sure.

  Jatayu: Ut niye proshno kora cholbe? (Is asking a question on camels permitted?)

  Feluda: Cholbe. (Yes, it is.)

  Jatayu: Uter khadya ki? (What do camels eat?)

  Feluda: Pradhanata kanta jhop. (Mainly thorny bushes.)

  Jatayu: Ut ki kanta bechhe khay? (Do they separate out the thorns when they eat?)

  That’s Lalmohan-babu for you: much more than an associate. He is a star, a true Bengali icon.

  Feluda’s Villains: From Dr Hazra to Maganlal Meghraj

  What makes Feluda tick? What explains his popularity? To probe deeper into this, I must talk about the villains. Feluda is pitted against adversaries whose brilliance often threatens to outshine his own. The villains are superstars in their own right. They bring the best out in Feluda too – and that might be one clue to why our man from Rajani Sen Road remains so compelling from one generation to the next, for five decades.

  Of all the villains, Maganlal Meghraj has a special place, no doubt in part because of the character played to perfection by the legendary Utpal Dutta in Satyajit Ray’s Joi Baba Felunath. In both the book and the movie, it is evident from the get-go – when Maganlal comes to meet Machhli Baba – that there is something special about him. In the film, he just walks past Feluda and his team, his face indifferent. Then we see him, sitting in front of the baba, intently listening to Reba Muhuri sing ‘Mohe lage lagana’; his face has an element of ruthlessness even in repose. The quiet menace of the man only grows through the movie. As I said earlier, one of the best scenes in it is the humiliation of Lalmohan-babu, and how it brings everything to a head. Maganlal had initially tried to bribe and intimidate Feluda into stopping the investigation. It is only when Feluda turns aggressive in his attempt to stop the bullying of Lalmohan-babu does Maganlal start to show his true colours. Even as he screams at the servant who fired the pistol at Feluda, Maganlal adds that he would deduct the cost of the broken flower vase from the man’s salary. Yet, that parsimoniousness is gone as he watches the skilful Arjun at his knife throwing. He respects talent, even in an enemy: evident when he observes that Feluda is endowed with an extraordinary brain. But it is his domain – and even Prodosh Mitter is rendered powerless in front of Maganlal for the time being. Feluda’s helplessness and vulnerability in that scene are crucial to the pay-off that the viewer gets from the eventual revenge. I believe it also holds yet another key to what endeared Feluda to his scores of fans.

  Maganlal is no ordinary villain and that is the real point. Moving base to Kathmandu comes easy to him and he has the unique ability to laugh at himself. His ability to joke about his own weird behaviour after he is forced to consume the cube of LSD in jail in Kathmandu is just extraordinary.

  Clearly the standout villain in the Feluda oeuvre, he is one of those villains in the pantheon of Indian cinema who will continue to have universal appeal. Barring Sholay’s Gabbar Singh played by Amjad Khan, and Mogambo, the larger-than-life villain of Mr India, played by Amrish Puri, we have not had villains who signify such complexity as Maganlal. As Sharmistha Gooptu writes, ‘For the larger part, Hindi film villains, even when they became popular largely always played out the good-versus-evil schema of the epics, the simplified aspect of the Ram-Ravana myth. For truly, when a generation of children did not sleep at night, they might be told stories of Gabbar … in the bad man’s own proud words, “So ja beta … nahin toh Gabbar Singh aa jayega.” It was lines such as these which made Gabbar the legend that he did become, spoken words which brought to life a personality which was not our typical Hindi film hero or villain, but complex, and fascinating for being scary or genuinely amusing, and not digested all at once.’

  Maganlal is similar. We love to hear him speak Bengali in that unique non-Bengali accent of his, hear him say refuz rather than ‘refuse’ and call Lalmohan-babu Halwamohan-babu with a kind of mock affection. He makes us love him while successfully getting under our skin each time he bullies Lalmohan-babu. Maganlal Meghraj is one of the main reasons why people want to read and watch Joi Baba Felunath again and again. He may be bad, but he is never hateful. In fact, he is always electrifying and produces a kind of odd excitement, which makes bad sexy and magnetic. So much so, his personality even threatens to eclipse the real hero, Feluda, on more than one occasion.

  Even in the climax of the film when Feluda avenges the treatment meted to Jatayu, Maganlal manages to win over the audience. It is a tussle between two equally matched men and that’s why Feluda’s victory tastes better. When he forces Maganlal to say, ‘Keto taka chai, Mr Mitter, keto taka?’ (How much do you want, Mr Mitter, how much?), it is far more than a victory of good over evil. Maganlal’s suffering, which is equally dramatic and spectacular, ends up adding to our admiration for the character. Blinking each time Feluda fires a shot from his favourite Colt .32, we see a different side of Maganlal: that he too is scared and vulnerable. A criminal of his calibre begging for mercy while trying hard not to lose his poise has elevated the climax of Joi Baba Felunath into a cinematic classic. And when Maganlal falls into Inspector Tewari’s lap in the very same way that Lalmohan-babu had done in his house, the wheel of retribution turns a full circle.

  In a Bengal that has been dented by multiple chit fund frauds, the figure of Maganlal continues to be more real to the masses than any of the more sophisticated villains in contemporary Bollywood flicks. Sitting on his gaddi, surrounded by a gang of his own strongmen and operating in hawala mode, Maganlal is a very Bengali villain. Maganlal may not be as devious as Moriarty, but he is firmly rooted in the lives of the people of Bengal in a way that the Moriartys of the literary world never can be.

  Another villain with his own fan following is Mandar Bose of Sonar Kella. With his ability to captivate kids with his magic tricks, and posing as a globetrotter in his worn-out Bata shoes, there is a touch of the romantic about him. But it is his sense of humour that truly marks Bose out in the pantheon of Feluda’s adversaries. You may remember asking Dr Hazra for some money to eat, adding in the same breath, ‘Only solid’. And when Hazra asks ‘And liquid?’, Bose quips back: ‘Only Horlicks’, with a sheepish grin. As is true of so many characters in various Feluda stories, without Mandar Bose, there is no Sonar Kella.

  The other villains who deserve special mention and some of whom almost outwit Feluda on occasions include Mahadev Chaudhuri, Naresh Pakrashi and Anantalal Batra. Chaudhuri’s fascination for watches and his desperation to get hold of the Perigal Repeater in G
orosthane Sabdhan, which pits him against Feluda and even sees him abduct Feluda and Topshe, makes him a far more challenging adversary than any ordinary collector or entrepreneur. He is willing to go the extra yard and isn’t afraid of taking Feluda on. His self-confidence, which translates into a degree of overconfidence on occasions, makes him all the more charismatic. And Naresh Pakrashi, the quintessential Bengali romantic with a penchant for collecting travelogues and other rare books, does manage to get one up on Feluda in their first meeting. He is excellent when he says during his first meeting with Feluda, ‘Amaar bayash teshatti aar amar kukurer bayas tin. Jate Doberman. Bairer lok amar ghare beshikkhon thake seta o pochhondo kore na … kajei …’ (I am sixty-three and my dog is three. He is a Doberman by breed and he doesn’t like outsiders staying in my house for too song. So…) (makes a gesture forcing Feluda to leave). Finally, in Anantalal Batra we have someone extremely shrewd and cunning. Doubling up as two characters, Batra is as much the backbone of Joto Kando Kathmandute as Maganlal Meghraj.

  In celebrating fifty years of Feluda, what we also celebrate is the immortality of these unique characters of Bengali literature and celluloid.

  In fact, Feluda@50 allows us an opportunity to revisit each of these creations. It is an occasion to celebrate Sidhu Jyatha, a voracious reader and a man with exemplary social commitment. Sidhu Jyatha is perhaps Feluda’s Google, a man of exceptional intelligence and knowledge. In an age where digital technology had not consumed lives, Sidhu Jyatha and his old-school ways of maintaining records – books, journals, magazines and clippings – provided Feluda with many an exigent tip. And it was this octogenarian Jyatha, a man Feluda has the greatest respect for, who comes running to his house to inform him about the Sidikpur plane crash in Kailashe Kelenkari, and even offers him money to undertake the investigation. He affectionately tests Topshe on occasions, and stakes a claim to having encouraged Feluda to become a private detective.

  Celebrating the Feluda oeuvre is also a chance to relive the old-school charms of Kolkata through the eyes of a well-loved character. New Market is where Feluda gets his freshly made chanachur. It is where they first spot ‘Nakal Batra’, setting up the mystery in Joto Kando Kathmandute. North Kolkatans can venture out to the sweet shop next door for mishti and singara, as Lalmohan-babu would do on his way to Rajani Sen Road. It is still a very north Kolkata ritual to start the day with singara and jilipi from one of the many street-side shops, which are slowly being consumed by the bigger eateries and restaurant chains. And tea drinkers can drink a cup of Darjeeling to toast the half-century-old Prodosh C. Mitter.

  Finally, Feluda is also a celebration of Bengaliness. Well read, well travelled, the brightest spark around – he is the best of our youthful aspirations and our dreams. Feluda unites the Bengali diaspora in a manner second to none. The essence of him, however, is pan-Indian; the middle-class man who both challenges the normative (in his unusual profession), yet respects the boundaries of social norms (in his respectful ways, his strong moral fibre). There are Feluda fans across the globe, Feluda dialogues are dropped at many a conversation, and Feluda movies are watched as a matter of ritual. It is this world that will come together to celebrate Feluda and his achievements starting December 2015.

  Going Backstage with Feluda

  Boria Majumdar

  Of the many things I like about Feluda, the three standouts are: his sense of morality, honesty and the tremendous similarity with my father. Feluda epitomizes everything that we have come to associate with an Indian middle-class ethos. His sense of honesty is exemplary, evident best in Ghurghutiyar Ghatona when he returns the precious set of books given to him by the murderer, saying he won’t accept books from a criminal. He shares most of his traits with my father – his voracious appetite for books, his love for travel, his social commitment and, finally, his transnational outlook. – Sandip Ray

  Unlike all of us, for Sandip Ray, Feluda has been a very special association. Feluda was created by his father when Sandip was a toddler. In fact, to an extent it was created for him and for many of his generation. He saw Feluda grow up with him, evolve into a cult and gradually assumed responsibility of keeping Feluda alive. ‘I would eagerly wait for the Feluda illustrations, which Baba did, read the stories the moment they were published, before Baba started handing them to me for comments when I was slightly older, and when I turned film-maker my first thought was to start with a Feluda film. I did not because I knew there would be unfair comparisons and started with Fatikchand. But Feluda was always there for me. He was in a way my responsibility. I had to keep him alive, nurture him, to ensure he continued to be loved by readers and viewers alike. That’s what I have tried to do for the last two decades and more,’ says Sandip.

  There is little doubt Sandip Ray has been instrumental in keeping alive, indeed growing, the cult of Feluda with his numerous celluloid versions of the detective, starting with Baksha Rahasya in 1996. So well entrenched is our hero on the screen today that it is with surprise that I listen to Sandip Ray talk about how every Feluda film is inevitably accompanied by chaos.

  Mired in Financial Trouble

  Feluda, at least in his screen adaptations, has never had it easy. Sandip Ray’s efforts to make the films had hit a serious roadblock in the middle of the 1990s. Keen to have the movie ready for the occasion of Prodosh Mitter’s thirtieth anniversary in 1995, Sandip Ray had approached every possible producer in Bengal, big and small. Unbelievably, every one of them felt that Feluda doesn’t sell. ‘Not a single producer came forward. Some even said that Feluda is only for children and by the mid-1990s things had moved on in the industry. Without a proper woman character in the film, and in the absence of sex, love and romance, producers felt it just wouldn’t work. I had no option but to drop the idea of making Feluda for the big screen at the time.’

  Frustrated at the multiple rebuffs, Ray, who picked Sabyasachi Chakrabarty as Feluda (in a particularly brilliant bit of casting) and Rabi Ghosh as Lalmohan-babu in trying to give a new life to the character, opted to make Baksha Rahasya as a telefilm. ‘Casting Rabi-da as Lalmohan-babu was a difficult call. Santosh Dutta had made the character immortal and for anyone to play the character was tough. Rabi-da was my best bet, given his versatility as an actor,’ says Sandip. However, none of it really helped. No one came forward to put the end product on air because telefilms weren’t in vogue at the time, Ray explains. Had he made a teleserial, rather than a telefilm, he would have had more success – at least that is what the industry feedback was. ‘I was desperate. The product was ready. Somehow I needed to showcase it to fans, but I wasn’t able to. I really did not know what to do for a while,’ he says, during one of our many interactions in the course of working on this book. That’s when he decided to revive Satyajit Ray Productions, a film distribution company that had not done much work till then. He also contacted Chhayabani, which had distributed many Satyajit Ray films. The owners of Chhayabani assured him that they would put in the money, and release Baksha Rahasya as a telefilm in Nandan Two under the auspices of Satyajit Ray Productions.

  In the credits the movie is mentioned as jointly produced by Satyajit Ray Productions and Chhayabani, with Chhayabani providing the distribution money. Nandan Two was booked for a month and, in a first in Bengali film industry, a telefilm was released in this way. For four straight weeks, Baksha Rahasya played to packed houses at Nandan. Each of the three shows, every single day, was a sell-out. ‘It was just incredible to see the thousands of Feluda fans turn up to see Baksha Rahasya. There were queues that were a mile long and people were euphoric to see Feluda make a comeback. I spent hours in Nandan trying to soak it all up. It also meant that people had not rejected Benu (Sabyasachi) and Rabi-da. You might want to go and watch Feluda for who he is for the first time, but repeat viewing could only happen if the film had merit. That’s what had given me the most satisfaction,’ says Ray.

  So, did the success of Baksha Rahasya enable financing of future films? No, nothing changed at all. The
packed halls did nothing to convince producers that a Feluda film would work for the big screen. If anything, their objections grew stronger: what may have worked as a telefilm would never work for the big screen. The two mediums had their own dynamics, profoundly different from each other. Ray’s only hope was to keep Feluda alive on the small screen and not give up, like Feluda never does.

  In the world of television, however, the success of Baksha Rahasya had not gone unnoticed. Within weeks of its release at Nandan, Sandip Ray received a proposal to make a thirty-part Feluda series to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the sleuth. The producer was keen to buy the title rights of Baksha Rahasya as well, but Ray would have to break it down for television, so it could be serialized. ‘With nothing else working, this was the only option to keep Feluda going,’ he says. ‘I agreed to do the series and set to work.’

  He chose his stories carefully, trying to rein in the ever-increasing budget and always conscious of the constraints of working in television. International travel was out of bounds and even a trip to Mumbai was an ordeal. The second story Sandip filmed was Gosainpur Sargaram. To his credit, the core unit of Baksha Rahasya had been retained for this excellent rendition of a classic Feluda story. Rabi Ghosh, while never as good as Santosh Dutta, was a competent Jatayu. Feluda was clearly working on television.