In Satyajit Ray’s Shonar Kella (The Golden Fortress), Feluda’s trusted lieutenant and incidentally his cousin, Topshe, is seen gulping down his breakfast at break-neck speed so that he doesn’t lose out on any scrap of conversation between the sleuth and his prospective client who is waiting in the visitor’s room. Topshe’s mother is visibly and naturally concerned at the prospect of him missing his classes in school if he tags along with Feluda on his latest adventure. Topshe’s father, nonchalantly says something that has become almost a part of popular folklore in Bengali society -- “Felur moto master ki ache shei school e?” which roughly translates as “Does he have a teacher like Felu in his school?”
I had thought of this being the starting point for my article for I have often wondered what did Topshe’s father mean when he spoke of Felu being the kind of teacher which even the best of schools would lack. What is the kind of knowledge that the detective imparts on his young cousin, which makes the latter’s father willing to let his son miss his school without fear or reprimand from the institution?
Anyone familiar with Feluda’s adventures would agree that to a large extent, the 27-year-old detective is the quintessential Renaissance man to his younger cousin and to most readers. He knows more than a hundred indoor games, is comfortable writing with both hands, is a voracious reader, is a shooting champion, wonderful with riddles, translates books, and the list goes on. All this along with his being a Private Investigator in the shadow of his self-confessed guru Sherlock Holmes.
The novellas/stories are replete with him sharing his wisdom and knowledge on most things, ranging from Parapsychology to the Pyramids of Egypt, from musical notations to imported and now extinct cars like Lagonda and Hispano Suiza. So, it is not a surprise then, that Felu has come to be regarded as best suited to expand the horizon of knowledge, beyond the four walls of the classroom and the vicious circle of syllabus and examinations.
Bengali literature abounds in these “dada” (elder brother) figures. But not all of them share the qualities of Ray’s detective. They have things in common -- they have a dedicated and loyal group of teenagers (mostly all young boys) who are young enough to be their younger brothers or familial cousins; they have a colourful imagination and themselves are repository of stories and anecdotes that border on the unbelievable and the ludicrous, and yet, all these tales are served with a straight face so that one never knows the fine dividing line between truth and incredulity.
We Bengalis have this cultural thing called “gul” which doesn’t necessarily translate to “lying”. You see, the act or idea of lying has an element of malice or moral judgment to it -- it is on the wrong side of the border separating truth and falsity. “Gul” on the other hand is mostly innocent -- it is an exercise in stretching the limits of imagination. One doesn’t morally judge the person serving up the “Gul,” rather one laps it all up with a smile on their face knowing full well that such a story could put the fiction makers of 1001 Arabian Nights to shame. There is an element of innocence which distinguishes such an account from what is false or a lie. And Bengali literature once abounded with such characters.
My argument is that the disappearance of these “dadas” has a lot to do with the changing social and economic dynamics of the Bengali/Calcutta society. The likes of Teni da, Pindi da, Brojo da, Ghona da were products of a time where time could be whiled away. The meeting place would at times be someone’s house, or just the seating extension called “Rowaak” outside the main entrance of the building, an architectural speciality specially in North Calcutta. With real estate coming in and properties being taken over by developers and land sharks, flats and gated communities have replaced these buildings. And with surveillance and security cameras and paid security arrangements stationed, the possibility of seeing young men gathered or huddled together for a heated debate on politics, cinema. or football is rare. The war is now fought on social media. As T.S. Eliot would say, “We prepare faces to meet the faces that we meet,” and in our cases, we have social media profiles, curated and looked after to make the entire world believe a particular version of our lives.
Which brings me to the second part of my proposition. And for that, there is a snippet of a story from one of Pindi da’s narratives that I want to share. Pindi da, (created by Ashutosh Mukhopadhyay) tells his friends that he was previously in Brazil, part of their football set up. His full name is Pradip Narayan Dutta, but when the entire stadium chanted the initials (P.N.D) of his name as he ran with the ball in his feet, it was shortened to sound Pindi and that is how that name had stuck. He further says that an unfortunate injury had cut short his footballing career but he was still revered by everyone associated with the beautiful game in Brazil -- so much so that the Brazilian Football Federation arranged for an all-expense trip for Pindi da to London to provide moral support for the team for a match against the English.
Now as fantastical as this tale might sound, Pindi da’s narrative is punctuated by a straight-faced humour and sincerity. But had this been written in today’s day and age, or even conceived of, we would have found a glaring glitch in the tale -- for everything that Pindi da has to say to make his story credible, there is always Google to fall back upon to ascertain the veracity of it all. This is what search engines have done -- with Alexa and Siri at our fingertips and only a push of the button away, information is not only readily available but also always under the microscope. When in Sandip Ray’s Gorosthaane Shabdhaan Felu da is shown to be visiting cyber cafes to access the internet and take certain prints, it had ruffled a lot of cine-goers who were not convinced that Feluda did not have an internet connection at his residence or on his phone. Similarly, the likes of Teni Da and Ghona da would also be under scrutiny, their tall tales only a few clicks and hyperlinks away from being exposed as figments of a fertile imagination. It is not surprising therefore, that such characters have vanished from the Bengali literary milieu.
If the social media boom could be looked upon as one of the reasons for the disappearance of a particular kind of stock figure from the literary scene, other societal and cultural developments could be other major factors. Our growing up years were punctuated by the Sunday visits to the “Saloon,” for the mandatory haircut for the young and the old. Most of these shops were makeshift ones, some even finding a place under the shade of a tree. These barber shops had another function -- that it served as a meeting place for people of the locality. Tea and newspapers were staple and more than once, missives have been sent from different households to call back the male members who have been out since morning and half spent half the day discussing everything under the sun. This space is a male dominated space but the issues of gender is something that the space of this article does not permit me to get into. But what I want to communicate is, that in a world where we have internalised ideas like time equalling money and where our lives are determined by the number of “likes” and “shares” our posts get on social media, these gatherings at the local tea shop and barber shops or even at the grocery store is not deemed important or “cool” enough. The visits to these “saloons” have been replaced by snazzy pictures taken at high end “salons.” visits to the local vegetable seller, and grocery wo/man have given way to online ten-minute delivery apps and the quintessential Bengali “adda” has now become almost a narcissistic exercise where all we are worried about is not an exchange of ideas and opinions but rather an acceptance according to the codes that have come to legitimise our existence.
The Indian Subcontinent by essence and nature is a social and geographical space driven by statistics. A look at our collective obsession with digits and numerals only substantiate this proposition -- whether it is to ascertain who is the better batsman over the last 5 years, or who is the bigger movie star with box-office collections or even the very rudimentary, whose grades and CGPA scores are better. These statistics blind us to the finer things in life. We seem to be losing out on the larger picture but rather have willingly entered a blind rat race where our worth is determined by how much we earn and how much we possess. I am reminded of a few lines from Kahlil Gibran where he says,
“Men drink and race as though
They were the steeds of mad desire,
Thus, some are blatant when they pray
And others frenzied to acquire.”
In a world which seems to be like “Umberto Eco on steroids”, having associations and friends like the “dadas” of Bengali literature would be considered a waste of time since nothing fruitful comes out of it. Thus, the likes of Teni da is a relic of the past and the art of telling and garnishing these tall tales are an extinct form. To round off this article, I would like to draw the readers’ attention to Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines, a novel that spans generations and countries. Tridib, has this knack of spinning yarns and weaving stories and has found a dedicated audience and admirer in the novel’s unnamed narrator. The narrator’s grandmother on the other hand does not approve of this hero worship and warns the young boy to stay away from Tridib, because his “time stinks”. Bengali literature abounds with characters whose time, according to the grandmother here, would be stinking. Ironically, in a world which is fast becoming divided into black and white, where events are being pushed under the carpet and erased, we do need yarns and stories to prevent all of us looking exactly like each other.
Sayan Aich Bhowmik is Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Shirakole College, West Bengal. He has recently published his debut collection of poems, I Will Come With A Lighthouse.