Satyajit Ray is best known to the world as a filmmaker of “rare genius,” but in Bengal and Indian literary circles, he is also remembered as the writer who sketched incredible characters. Inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Homes and Belgian cartoonist Hergé comic series, The Adventures of Tintin, Ray’s literary characters have become legends in their own right.
As we mark what would have been Ray’s 104th birthday, here are five of his most beloved literary creations, who live on in bookshelves, schoolbags, and the imaginations of readers young and old.
1 Feluda
Prodosh C Mitter, better known as Feluda, is Ray’s tribute to the inimitable Sherlock Holmes. A la Holmes, the cigarette-smoking detective solves a slew of mysteries — murders, theft and kidnapping — with a mix of deductive brilliance and Bengali wit. The 27-year-old solves a slew of mysteries across the Indian sub-continent, all the way from Kolkata to Kathmand with the help of his sharp “magajastra” (brain). Narrated by his cousin Tapesh Ranjan Mitra or Topshe, the stories are brisk and suspenseful and have become an emblem of Kolkata in his own right.
📘 Essential Read: Badshahi Angti (The Emperor’s Ring)
2. Lalmohan Ganguly (Jatayu)
Crime novelist by profession, coward by default, and sidekick by destiny—Lalmohan Ganguly (pen name Jatayu) begins as comic relief but evolves into a lovable, loyal companion. He pens titles such as Honduras-e Hahakar and Vancouver-er Vampire and owns an antique repeater watch and a boomerang, but it’s his warmth, not his weaponry, that endears him to readers.
📘 Essential Read: Baksho Rahasya
3. Topshe
Tapesh Ranjan Mitter, better known as Topshe, is the narrator of the Feluda series. A teenager with a steady pen, he’s the loyal sidekick as well as the lens through which we experience Feluda’s world. He is the Watson to Feluda’s Holmes.
🖋 Essential Read: The Curse of the Goddess
4. Professor Shonku
An eccentric scientist and inventor with a pet cat named Newton, Professor Trilokeshwar Shonku has held readers spellbound for over five decades. The scientist, literally and figuratively ahead of his time – travels through space and time, speaks multiple languages, and experiments with invisibility and anti-gravity, all from his modest home in Giridih.
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Essential Reads: The Diary of a Space Traveller and The Mystery of Munroe Island and Other Stories
5. Tarini Khuro
Much like his creator, Tarini Khuro (paternal uncle) is a master storyteller keeping his audience of five young boys enthralled with stories gathered and lived through. The character appears in at least 15 of Ray’s stories. The eccentric bachelor with regales stories that seem too strange to be true—ghosts, curses, and inexplicable occurrences. Ray gives him the voice of a natural raconteur, blurring the line between fantasy and memory.
📘 Essential Read: Khagam
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