A room full of Feluda fans sat around tasty bakes and steaming brew to take a verbal tour around the city, making pit stops at the roads and neighbourhoods where the sleuth’s maker had taken him in course of his adventures. After all, the café where the conversation was taking place has been named L’Ray Treat after Satyajit Ray himself.
The guest speaker that evening was a Ray specialist, Prasenjit Dasgupta. In keeping with the occasion, co-owner cum patisserie Ishita Dasgupta was serving pastries that had toppings replicating Ray’s sketches, each piece being unique.
Munching on one, the author of Felu Mittirer Kolkata, among his other books on the “private investigator”, started off by pointing out that Feluda’s exact address is not mentioned in his first couple of adventures. “Badshahi Angti carries only a hint about his city of residence where Topshe says that adventures follow Feluda whenever he leaves Calcutta,” he said.
Ray’s illustrations on cakes baked at the cafe.
Search for Feluda’s home
“The third adventure, Kailash Chowdhurir Pathor, has no mention of Feluda’s residence though we get a sense of them staying in south Calcutta. They travel by tram to places like Victoria Memorial and Shyampukur. We come to know in Sonar Kella that he stays on Tara Road. But when the story was made into a film, we find his residence has shifted to Rajani Sen Road. The first text to have a mention of Rajani Sen Road is Gorosthane Sabdhan. He asks Jatayu (his friend Lalmohan Ganguly) not to enter Rajani Sen Road without changing the horn of his car,” Dasgupta continued.
Susmita Dasgupta, one of the listeners and a resident of Alaktika Abasan, pointed out that there was a distance of less than a kilometre between Tara Road and Rajani Sen Road, indicating Ray’s familiarity with the area being a local resident himself.
Some non-Feluda stories too demonstrate Ray’s familiarity with the city. In the short story, Patalbabu Filmstar, Patalbabu reaches the Mission Row-Bentinck Street crossing, in front of Faraday House. “That building exists. The story was published in 1963. His film Mahanagar had released in September that year and explored Calcutta as well.”
Auction houses in Russell Street and Park Street feature several times in his stories and Ray also shows how they cheat customers.
Rooted in hometown
It is said that Feluda often travels out of Calcutta, Dasgupta pointed out, and proceeded to debunk the notion. “Gorosthane Sabdhan is a rare story that uses a Calcutta landmark as a character in the story. Even if we set that aside, there is Baksho Rahasya. We think of Shimla when we mention that story. But of the 10 chapters it has, the first five are in Calcutta,” Dasgupta said. He went on to describe how they crisscross the city in those five chapters. “They meet someone in Lansdowne Road, walk to Hotel Hindusthan International, take a taxi to Park Street and then to Grand Hotel. There is also a mention of Pretoria Street. Around 11pm, there was no one there on the street to direct them. It was a different Calcutta then,” Dasgupta remarked.
The address they were looking for, 4/2 Pretoria Street, Feluda realises, does not exist. Dasgupta pointed out that this trope of non-existent addresses had been used by Ray elsewhere as well. In Golapi Mukta Rahasya. Maganlal Meghraj has an office in Central Avenue. “I had searched for that address, 67 Central Avenue. It really can’t be found. After house number 63, a lane called Giri Babu Lane meanders towards Bowbazar. The next address, Islamia Hospital, is numbered 73. My guess is the plots in between got merged into the hospital. Ray must have sensed that he could not make an actual house share a villain’s office address and found a non-existent house plot,” he said, making audience members marvel at the depth of Ray’s research.
Ray had said that he could not bring in crimes of adult nature in Feluda stories because of his readership. So he confined his plots to theft, treasure hunt, puzzle solving, kidnapping and murder. “But the race course does find mention in a couple of stories, like Kailashe Kelenkari. And if he wants to add a negative touch to a character, the person is mentioned to be into horse racing. Coincidentally, he had shot Seemabaddho at the race course a few years earlier.”
Places of tourist attraction in Calcutta do not feature in detail in his stories but he does evoke places which appear attractive after reading about them, like St. John’s Church, Holwell Monument or the South Park Street Cemetery.
“If you draw a straight line across the map, you will find all the spots Feluda visits across that line. Hasn’t Sandip Ray (Ray’s son) said that Baba sent Feluda to all the places he had himself visited and Professor Shonku to places where he had not?” Dasgupta said, to peals of laughter.
He had heard from Sandip that Ray used to write to friends residing in the city of his choice to situate his Shonku story in, seeking road maps, tourist brochures, picture postcards etc. It was after receiving the envelope that he would start sketching.
Changing city
A lot of the Calcutta mentioned in Ray’s stories have been relegated to architectural history. Bird markets inside New Market are mentioned in two stories — Nitaibabur Moyna and Jehangirer Swarnamudra. “I have not seen those shops. The aviary section does not exist. Neither do the bookshops Ray had mentioned in New Market,” Dasgupta said.
The cannon at the centre which Feluda had mentioned as a meeting point has been shifted out. The chanachur shops that prepared masala mixtures near the exit, opening out towards Nizam’s, are all but gone. A single one remaining sells only packaged fare.
Among the listeners were two 89-year-olds from Snehodiya, Snigdha Sen and Rina Guha. “Snigdhadi is into Feluda but I have not read a single story. Yet I enjoyed the discussion so much,” Guha said.
Write to saltlake@abp.in
