Felu Mitter

The Complete Adventures of Feluda
Satyajit Ray
(translated into English by Gopa Majumdar)
Volume I and II
Revised Edition-2004
Penguin Books India

I recently went to the Strand Book Sale held at Basava Bhavan. Obviously it included a visit to Chalukya. That goes without saying.

I bought the entire series of Feluda, by Satyajit Ray. It did dent my father's pocket. Nevertheless Feluda is Feluda. Nobody can match him or his creator. Both are absolutely out-of-the world. This was one of those first books that my eyes fell upon when i started Indian Literature. And i made M and father read it. Both were entranced.

Ray admits his source of inspiration to be Sherlock Holmes. He wanted to write detective stories for children. And he did, in a children's magazine, Sandesh. Apparently he found it difficult to write, as sex and violence was absent. But, Feluda went on to become famous, worldwide.
The language is pretty simple. And the story gripping. What more can a child ask for?

Some of the tales were made into movies, which became immensely popular. It's said to be insuperable even to this day in Hindi/Bengali cinema.

Ray also wrote on Professor Shonku. A very weird world-renowned scientist, who goes on to invent life under a microscope. It's illusion. That's what his stories can be termed. Amazing. Now, that i've got the whole collection within my reach, it's appears to be pretty impossible to put it down.