National Geographic Traveller India – July 2019

JULY 2019 | NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER INDIA 81

DINODIA PHOTO/CORBIS/GETTY IMAGES

T

he obelisk on the grave of

William Wordsworth—an

officer in the British army, not

the Romantic—in Kolkata’s

South Park Street Cemetery, would have

worn a lighter cloak of moss on the June

morning of 1977 when Feluda, Topshe

and their funny writer friend Lalmohan

Babu walked past it to check out a crime

scene. That’s my first thought as I enter

the cemetery, fresh out of a reread of

Satyajit Ray's “Gorosthaney Sabdhan”

(“The Secret of the Cemetery”).

Pradosh Chandra Mitter aka Feluda,

R ay ’s bhadrolok detective with sparkling

wit, and an appetite for Nizam’s rolls

and Charminar cigarettes, is every

Bengali kid’s superhero. Feluda and his

cousin-cohort Topshe can be called the

travelling detectives. Their adventures

span from the deserts of Rajasthan

to the mountains of Nepal, and even

London and Hong Kong. Yet the Mitters

and Lalmohan Babu, who goes by the

pen name Jatayu, are quintessential

Calcutta folk.

In Ray’s world, the Mitters lived at

an imaginary address on the very real

Rajani Sen Road in the Jodhpur Park

area. Today, its gulmohar and peepul-

feels like crossing over to another era.

Standing by the white marble tombstone

of poet and reformer Henry Louis Vivian

Derozio, I know what Topshe meant by

the “sound of traffic going down Park

Street” blotting out here. Instead, the

tree-covered burial grounds rustle with

sounds of scampering squirrels, hooting

birds, and truant college students

swapping ghost stories.

While every Kolkata mystery

unravels a different chapter of the city,

“Gorosthaney Sabdhan”is a unique

journey. In this story, “Feluda’s latest

passion was Calcutta.” It starts with

Fancy Lane, an L-shaped street right

by St. John’s Church in what is today’s

“office para.” Where now I find old

offices and shops, there once stood a

podium for public hangings or phashi

in Bengali. Like many other words—

even surnames—in Bengal, the street's

name changed to echo the Englishmen’s

pronunciation. The story debuting

Lalmohan Babu’s second-hand Mark 2

Ambassador took me on a ride through

a city in transition. In Feluda’s Calcutta,

street names are changing—the British-

appointed Dalhousie Square declared

B.B.D. Bagh after freedom fighters—

lined lanes slumber wrapped in elderly

art deco bungalows. Their strange

cases: car chases through Lansdowne

in “Golokdham Rahashya” (“The

Mysterious Tenant”); meeting dodgy

doppelgängers at Hogg Market in “Joto

Kando Kathmandute” (“The Kathmandu

Caper”); looking for old family portraits

in the now-closed, almost 200-year-old

Bourne & Shepherd photo studio; or

following suspects to Park Street auction

houses in “Indrajal Rahashya” (“Magical

Mystery”), offer an interesting glimpse of

Calcutta of the 1960s and ’70s.

My Feluda adventure begins at the

gates of the over 250-year-old South

Park Street Cemetery, entering which

First manufactured

in 1957 by Hindustan

Motors in Kolkata,

the Ambassador

taxis of the city are

just as iconic as its

British-era buildings.

INDIA

Kolkata