Of all the fictional characters created by Satyajit Ray, I have always admired Trilokeshwar Shonku the most. Twenty-five years ago, around the time I was introduced to both Shonku and Feluda — another of Ray’s memorable creations — I had found it difficult to admit that I preferred the scientist over the detective. Most of my friends idolized Feluda: he was handsome, dealt with crime, loved cricket and possessed a razor-sharp intellect. Shonku, though brilliant, was bald, eccentric, haughty and, unlike Feluda, often admitted to fear and helplessness. For instance, when a lizard upturned a jar of deadly acid on the laboratory table, it was the dim-witted servant, Prahlad — unaware of the threat of an imminent explosion — who came to the rescue of a Shonku rendered immobile with dread.

Fifty years since Shonku’s appearance (or disappearance, if you like, to the distant planet, Tafa), I have begun to understand the reasons behind my preference. For one, a Shonku adventure is as much a travelogue as fantasy. Shonku’s diary is rich in descriptions of far-away places, their people and cultures. Tibet, a remote village in Norway, the Belgian Congo, Porori in the Brazilian Amazon — Shonku’s adventures took him to these as well as to many other exotic lands. To be fair, Feluda travelled too: Jodhpur, Delhi, Puri, Simla, Darjeeling, Benaras, and later, to Kathmandu, Hong Kong and London. But many of these popular tourist spots, unlike the distant and untravelled lands in Shonku’s tales, were familiar and accessible.

I also found Feluda’s genteel, sociable character unnerving: he is seldom unruffled (unless power cuts interrupted his reading), seems to be at ease with both friend and foe and is painfully decorous. (His occasional jibes directed at Lalmohanbabu are expressions of affection for the comical and floundering Jatayu). Shonku, on the other hand, can be unambiguously unpleasant. His irritability at intrusions into his private world — even Abinashbabu, his neighbour, does not remain unscathed — is a reminder of his need and love for solitude. Indeed it is Shonku’s solitary, but productive, life — walks by the Usri, a home manned by a cat and a servant, and hours of painful, but rewarding, experiments — that makes his hermit-like existence endearing.

Yet, unlike a hermit, he has immense pride and also craves recognition. There are repeated references to scientific awards: a doctoral degree from the Swedish Academy of Sciences, for instance. We are also reminded that Shonku’s intelligence quotient, 917, is far superior to that of the average man. But for all his brilliance, he is outwitted by a Chinese magician and rescued, at least twice, by Nokurbabu’s powers. But these contradictions also make him appear human and credible. In contrast, Feluda’s heroism and near-perfection confine him to the realm of the imagination.

But perhaps Shonku’s greatest strength is his ability to blur the lines between reality and fantasy. His diary chronicles encounters with wondrous entities such as a crow with bewitching intelligence (Corvus), an island full of plants that survive by devouring knowledge from humans (Florona), a pirate who conquered time (Blackhole Brandon), and so on. These episodes remind us, time and again, that science — which includes detection — cannot conquer the universe of knowledge completely.

In the very first Shonku story, Byomjatrir Diary, there is a symbolic hint of Shonku’s death. The diary — made of seemingly indestructible material and containing words written in a mysterious, magical ink that changes colours — is eaten up by ants. Shonku, significantly, had travelled to a planet that was populated by ant-like creatures. In a way, the birth of Shonku’s adventures coincides with the death of the protagonist. This reversal confounds readers who are used to a different sequence of life and death, of beginnings and endings. Feluda’s world of crime and detection is built on cold reason. But the world of Shonku — like the proverbial Wonderland — appears delightfully topsy-turvy, making us wonder about the need to separate fact from fiction.