Mystery novels are uncommon in Indian literature, so those Indian readers with a thirst for modern adventure stories were only able to slake it if they had access to English writers. Bengali readers, though, have been lucky enough to have Satyajit Ray’s delightful Feluda mysteries for over 30 years.
For those who have yet to make his acquaintance, Feluda is properly known as Prodosh Mitter, who lives in Calcutta. He is a private investigator in the Holmes style, taking up only interesting cases and willing to put both physical and mental energy into solving them. He is assisted by his 14-year-old cousin, Tapesh (aka Topshe) an able lieutenant who records the cases and picks up useful snippets of Feluda’s methods on the way. The two are also accompanied by Lalmohan Ganguly, an enthusiastic and cheerful companion who writes potboiler thrillers under the name of Jatayu.
Unlike many modern thrillers, the Feluda stories are not at all gruesome. People are captured or tied up or even beaten up, but the reader is not assailed by blood and gore (as, quite likely, he would be if he read Jatayu’s thrillers!). Sensitive children will not get nightmares after these books, but they are no less delightful for the lack of exploding eyeballs.
Feluda’s world is strange in one notable respect -- there are no women. He is entirely surrounded by men. He has no aunts or female cousins, as is common in large extended families. Every person he comes across on a bus or train is male, as is every person selling chappals on the roadside or eating in a train. There are little boys, but no little girls. One might think the author was uncomfortable with women characters, if this had not been the same person who created Charulata, Durga and Arati in his movies. Feluda’s household arrangements are a little mysterious too -- there is an occasional mention of Topshe’s father, who seems to live in the same house, but no other relatives seem to live there or run the household. Perhaps Satyajit Ray left these particular mysteries for his readers to solve.