Heroes that Played Detectives!

Morons fooling my kidhood

The Heroes of action & thrill danced like buffoons in our young heads, roughly holding an impression where we all knew in our hearts that they do not exist. They portrayed characters of Batman, Spiderman, Superman, Wonder-girl or even the spoofs, but they never fancied our nights. We switched to the Indian version of the same comic heroes like Naagraaj, Phantom, Doga etc. but they too stayed aloof by my mind. A young detective always played in me & I wondered what if there might be a hero who'd be ordinary like me & can still be Superb...

Having a maniacal love for the crime fiction since childhood, I adorably watched all the detective  serials that made our young brains engaged in hunting out ideas, to build a criminal plot. The figure that we dreamt in our childhood: a shadow left to be lit, while his tall hat & stiff smoking pipe gave him the borders as the smoke rings made their way out. Yeah, it was Sherlock Holmes. Then came the time when black & white TV sets were the richest properties & the casts playing in those sets were the heroes of wisdom. I remember passing stealing glances at the Bengali detective Byomkesh Bakshi, a character created by Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay, who was deeply influenced by Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. Bakshi was the hero of every age and whenever he was caught in a mishap with an ordinary looking criminal, they banged the hell outta my little heart as I formed awe for the detective master among the psychotic whirls of graveyard. I was impressed!

Feluda, Topshe & Jatayu

That was the demand of our times, when kiddies from the tinier world of dreams used to get scared as well as exhilarated watching them perform. Then the lapse of generation & time abruptly threw me in front of detective boosters walking around the town in suave packages, smashing boots, bullet-proof waist coats & plenteous derringers hanging by their cuffs. They spoke in alien tone, they lived like some wall smart figure just born from the no where land of nowhere and they fought like heroes that didn’t even feel like mine. I wasn’t impressed, but still I watched. I yawned to death, but I watched. And one day, I decided not to sit in front of the idiot box awaiting my hero back to life. I dug him out in books! Yeah, it was the master of Indian writers Satyajit Ray: the man who threw endless rings of brainy treatment to my hero & there he stood like the one, who’d just walked out of filth, to ruin the idiotic version of detectives roaming around in the city, making us bore into our little dilemmas. It was Pradosh Mitter alias Feluda, the ultimate private investigator, who thrilled out the teenage of mine with his partner Topshe & friend Jatayu, and made another true Indian-bong connection with the sincere efforts of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes. I was impressed again!

My heart leaped excitement in when it read
                          'The lamp burnt on the table and beside it sat the dead man.'

Feluda & the bunch

Watch them in action!