This year and month are rather appropriate occasions to reminisce about Sonar Kella, the first of the two Satyajit Ray films to chronicle Feluda’s adventures. Sonar Kella, released in 1974, marks its fiftieth year of existence in 2024. The film’s association with March, however, is sombre. The month marks the demise of Santosh Dutta, that brilliant actor who has enchanted generations of Bengalis with his portrayal of Lalmohan Ganguly alias Jatayu, the third member of the famed triumvirate along with Felu and Topshe.
The lives of Felu, Topshe and their legion of fans changed the moment Lalmohanbabu made his maiden appearance in Sonar Kella. Dressed in a coat with a blue muffler wrapped around his head, Lalmohanbabu enters the compartment of a train that has halted at Kanpur, instructs the hapless railway porter to handle his “imported” Japanese suitcase with care, gives him directions to place the luggage, turns his back on the man to count a seemingly miserly amount of change, turns around, faces him, dispenses the fee and, upon the poor man’s protestations, dismisses him in an endearingly flawed Hindi that Bengalis are not only associated with but have since also loved to mimic. What follows is Jatayu’s equally hilarious introduction to Felu and Topshe. His mannerisms, dramatic retelling of some passages from the Ramayana, along with his trademark pidgin Hindi have made the scene memorable. (Incidentally, the sequence unfolds slightly differently in the text which forms the basis of the film.)
This delightfully funny man retained his ability to make others laugh, quite often unintentionally, till Feluda’s last adventure. But it would be naïve, nay dense, to dismiss Lalmohanbabu’s role in the Feluverse as that of a mere jester.
The inception of Bengali crime fiction featuring an indigenous detective was heavily influenced by the emerging Western, chiefly English, genre that predated the former by some years. Thus the Bengali ‘private investigator’ — with due apologies to Byomkesh Bakshi who loathed the term — much like his European counterpart, often hunted not in a pack but as a pair. Panchkori Dey, a prolific writer with distinctly mundane literary skills, introduced the Bengali reader to the detective-assistant duo of Debendra Bijoy and Arindam; Jayanta-Manik were fleshed out by Hemendra Kumar Roy (in his paper, “The Bhadralok as Truth-Seeker: Towards a Social History of the Bengali Detective, Gautam Chakrabarti helpfully reminds us of another of Roy’s creations: Dilip Chaudhuri, the ‘chemist sleuth’, an expert in medico-legal cases, who had Shrimanta Sen as his companion); they were, of course, followed by Saradindu Bandopadhyay’s Byomkesh and Ajit.
But three would also be considered company by the writers of Bengali crime fiction. Thus, Subinspector Sundarbabu, his comic turn notwithstanding, was integral to Jayanta’s team. Kikira, the magician-detective brought to life by Bimal Kar, had two able assistants in the form of a clerk and a doctor. The Felu-Topshe-Jatayu triad would, arguably, fall under this category.
What would be apparent to a more discerning and possibly older — cynical? — reader is the demonstrably asymmetrical relationship shared by the detective and his assistant/s. The sleuth, quite naturally, possesses superlative faculties — formidable intelligence, intellectual depth, erudition, and fitness. This makes it impossible for the aide — the ‘have-not’, as it were — to forge a bond with the hero that is based on the principle of equality. There may be mutual trust, even a hint of affection, between the two but cerebral fraternity? Never. Thus, it falls on Jatayu and other lesser mortals to suffer the mild condescension of their illustrious companions. In Sonar Kella, Feluda’s poker-faced suggestion to Jatayu to correct his erroneous interpretation of the mechanism adopted by camels to generate their own water supply in the seventh edition of Saharay Shihoron serves as an example.
This is not to suggest that the detective’s sidekick is without his uses. The five-footer Jatayu has often risen to the occasion. In Sonar Kella (the film), he directs Feluda’s attention towards bowls made of yellow sandstone that proves to be decisive to the case’s resolution. When goons attack the three musketeers in “Napoleon er Chithi”, it is Lalmohanbabu who saves the day, rather the night, by unleashing his weapon — a hamandista (mortar and pestle) — against the assailants who had knocked out Felu and Topshe.
But if we are to look closely, the most important and enduring contribution of Jatayu has been to make Felu and Topshe appear plausible, relatable, even human. The classic detective was often portrayed as a misanthrope or, at least, a socially awkward being: in other words, he — iconic detectives were, unfortunately, overwhelmingly male — is immensely gifted but also a bit of a gauche, strangely dissociated from familial and social bonds. Felu and Topshe share this trait. There is a brief mention of Felu’s father — Joykrishna Mitter — in “Feludar Goyendagiri”. Topshe’s parents make fleeting appearances, such as in Sonar Kella, and, then, to borrow that inimitable expression of the villain, Mondar Bose, ‘vanish’ from the plots. Then, there is Sidhu Jyatha (he is not kin) with whom Felu shares a respectful but also utilitarian kinship. There is sparse mention of Feluda’s other friends/associates, an exception being two of his classmates who are referred to in “Bosepukur e Khunkharapi”. In contrast, we get to know a wee bit more about Lalmohanbabu’s clan. In “Ebar Kando Kedarnath e”, we learn that Jatayu’s great-grandfather was a paper merchant, that his grandfather and father had joined the family business, and that one of his uncles turned out to be a revolutionary. In a piece for a special edition of Sandesh dedicated to Feluda (1995), Leela Majumdar makes this very point about how Jatayu, that discernibly comical, flawed creature, helps deflect attention from the impossible and predictable — boring? — perfectionism of Felu. Felu’s solitariness, his disinterest in women or conjugality (unlike Byomkesh), his self-assuredness and inevitable triumphs, Majumdar writes, make him preternatural, even surreal. Topshe, she adds quite correctly, is an oddball too: his younger world, a realm of restraint and dedication towards his older cousin, is strangely shorn of the exuberance and the heartaches that are natural to adolescence. Interestingly, it is Jatayu who forms the fulcrum around which mostly revolve Felu’s emotional compass as readers get rare glimpses of his inner, sensitive, even sentimental core courtesy Lalmohanbabu’s trials: Felu’s rage at Jatayu’s humiliations by Maganlal Meghraj in other adventures is a case in point. The credit for Prodosh C. Mitter’s redemption from the fate that befell Sherlock — Holmes’s hugely popular, post-modern, television adaptation — that of a ‘high-functioning sociopath’, must go to Lalmohanbabu.
Being ‘reserved’ — socially aloof — was one of the qualities of the bhadralok detective; so argued the cultural historian, Sukumar Sen, who introduces a tantalising class angle while deciphering the cultural prototype of the cult Bengali detective. Can one extend Sen’s argument to suggest that a subaltern, as opposed to a middle-class — suspiciously Brahmo — Felu would have been a person liberated from and dismissive of the burden of gentility?
This ‘Other’ Felu may have even cultivated greater, more socially diverse, friends. But would Felu’s bhadralok admirers — self-appointed gate-keepers of cultural puritanism — approve?
uddalak.mukherjee@abp.in
