The Bandits of Bombay: Adventures of Feluda
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Authors: Satyajit Ray
T
HE
A
DVENTURES
OF
F
ELUDA
THE BANDITS OF
BOMBAY
Satyajit Ray
Translated from the Bengali by Gopa Majumdar
PUFFIN BOOKS
Contents
PUFFIN BOOKS
THE ADVENTURES OF FELUDA
THE BANDITS OF BOMBAY
Satyajit Ray (1921-1992) was one of the greatest filmmakers of his time, renowned for films like
Pather Panchali, Charulata, Aranyer Din Ratri
and
Ghare Baire
. He was awarded the Oscar for Lifetime Achievement by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science in 1992, and in the same year, was also honoured with the Bharat Ratna.
Ray was also a writer of repute, and his short stories, novellas, poems and articles, written in Bengali, have been immensely popular ever since they first began to appear in the children's magazine
Sandesh
in 1961. Among his most famous creations are the master sleuth Feluda and the scientist Professor Shonku.
∗
Gopa Majumdar has translated several works from Bengali to English, the most notable of these being Ashapurna Debi's
Subarnalata
and Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay's
Aparajito
, for which she won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2001. She has translated several volumes of Satyajit Ray's short stories and all of the Feluda stories for Penguin Books India. She is currently translating Ray's Professor Shonku stories, which are forthcoming in Puffin.
A MURDER IN AN ELEVATOR. A TRAIL OF HEADY PERFUME. THE NANASAHEB’S PRICELESS NAULAKHA NECKLACE …
Feluda, Topshe and Jatayu are in Bombay where Jatayu’s latest book is being filmed under the title
Jet Bahadur
. Soon after Jatayu hands over a package to a man in a red shirt, a murder takes place in the elevator of the high-rise where the producer of the film lives. Feluda and his companions find themselves in the midst of one of their most thrilling adventures ever, with a hair-raising climax aboard a train during location shooting.
Feluda’s twelve greatest adventures are now available in special Puffin editions. This is the
eighth
book in the series.
Translated from the Bengali by Gopa Majumdar
Cover photograph by Ashish Chawla
Cover design by Ajanta Guhathakurta
C
HAPTER
1
L
almohan babu—alias Jatayu—arrived one day, clutching a box of sweets. That surprised me, since all he ever carried when he came to our house was an umbrella. Whenever he published a new book, he would carry it as a parcel—but that happened twice a year, no more. That day, what he held in his hand was a box from a new sweet shop in Mirzapur Street, called Kallol. It was a white cardboard box tied with a golden ribbon, priced at Rs 25. On two sides of the box, printed in blue, were the words ‘Kallol’s Five-mix Sweetmeats’. Inside, I knew, there were five compartments, each holding a different kind of sweet. In its centre was Kallol’s own special creation—the ‘diamonda’. It was a sandesh filled with syrup, shaped like a diamond and covered with silver foil.
Why was Lalmohan babu carrying such a box? And why was there such a triumphant smile on his face?
Feluda spoke as soon as Lalmohan babu placed the box on a table and took a seat. ‘Good news from Bombay, I take it? Did you hear from them this morning?’
Lalmohan babu was taken aback by these questions, but the smile did not leave his face. Only his eyebrows rose higher. ‘How did you guess, heh heh?’
‘The siren at 9 o'clock rang an hour ago. Yet your watch is showing 3.15. It can only mean that when you wore it this morning, you were so excited that you didn't even glance at it. Did you forget to wind it? Or has the spring gone?’
Lalmohan babu said nothing about his watch. He simply tossed one end of his blue shawl over his shoulder, like an ancient Roman, and said, ‘I'd asked for twenty-five. This morning my servant woke me with a telegram. Here it is.’
He took out a pink telegram from his pocket and read it out: ‘“Producer willing offer ten for bandits please cable consent.” I sent my reply, “happily selling bandits for ten take blessings.”’
‘Ten thousand?’ Even Feluda, who hardly ever loses his cool, was round-eyed. ‘Your story sold for
ten thousand
?’
Lalmohan babu gave a smooth, velvety smile. ‘I haven't actually got the money. I mean, not yet. I’ll be paid only when I go to Bombay.’
‘You are going to Bombay?’ Feluda still sounded amazed.
‘Yes, and so are you two. At my expense. I couldn't have written that story without your help.’
What he said was perfectly true. Perhaps I should explain.
It was Jatayu's long-cherished dream that a film be made from one of his stories. He was naturally keen on a Hindi film, as that was far more likely to make money. So he had started writing a story that he thought might be suitable for a Hindi film. He knew a man called Pulak Ghoshal who worked in the Bombay film world. He was once Lalmohan babu's neighbour in Gorpar. Having worked as an assistant director in Tollygunj in Calcutta, he made a snap decision one day to go to Bombay. Now he was a successful director himself. Many of his films had already done very well at the box office.
Lalmohan babu's story got stuck after the third chapter. When he began to feel that he wasn't getting anywhere, he came to Feluda for advice. Feluda cast his eye over the unfinished story immediately, and said, ‘It is good that you got stuck at an early stage. If you'd plodded on and finished it, it would have been a complete waste of time. Bombay would have rejected it.’
Lalmohan babu scratched his head. ‘So what should I write that's going to be accepted? At first, I'd thought of watching a few current films, and then base my story on those. There were long queues everywhere I went. One day I had my pocket picked while I was standing in a queue. The second day, I spent more than an hour just to reach the ticket window, and then they said they had a full house, no tickets. I could see tickets being sold on the black market, but each was for twelve rupees. I could have bought one, but in the end I thought, what if I spend all that money and then get a headache? I might have had to take a pain killer when I came out. So I just went home.’
‘Don't worry, I’ll give you a formula,’ Feluda reassured him. ‘Double roles are very popular these days, aren't they?’
It turned out that Lalmohan babu didn't even know what a double role was.
‘Sometimes, there are two heroes in a film, who look identical.’
‘You mean twins?’
‘Yes, they can be twins; or just two men who look similar, but are not related. They may look the same, but one of them is good, the other is evil. Or one is bold and strong, the other is meek and mild. Generally, that's what you'd find in a film. You could be a little different, and instead of having just one pair of twins, you could have two. Hero number one and villain number one could be the first pair; and hero number two and villain number two could be the second. At first, the audience need not be told about the second pair. It can be a secret. Then …’
Lalmohan babu interrupted him. ‘Wouldn't that make things far too complicated?’
Feluda shook his head. ‘You need enough material to last three hours. It's no longer fashionable to show a lot of violence, there are new rules about that. So you have to tell your story in a different way. You’ll need an hour and a half to create a tangled web, and another hour and a half to straighten things out.’
‘So all I need are these double roles?’
‘No, there is more. Note it down.’
Lalmohan babu fished out a red notebook and a golden pencil from his pocket.
‘Smuggling, you need smuggling,’ Feluda went on, ‘Gold, diamonds, ganja, charas—it doesn't matter what it is. Then you need at least five songs. One of them should be devotional, that will be quite useful. You will also need a couple of dances, and two or three chase sequences during which at least one expensive car should be shown rolling down a hill. Then you must have a fire. The hero has to have a girlfriend, she’ll be the heroine; the villain must have a girlfriend, too, except that she will be called a vamp. What else will you need? A police officer! Yes, a police officer with a strong sense of duty; flash-back for the hero; comic relief; quick changes in scenes and events, so that your story doesn't get boring. Also, it will help if the story can take the major characters to the sea or into the hills because it's not good for film stars to stay cooped inside a studio for very long … Did you get all that?’
Lalmohan babu was still writing furiously. He nodded without pausing for a second.
‘Last, but not the least—in fact, this is most important—you need a happy ending. However, if you can create tragic situations and jerk a few tears before the happy ending, it will work much better.’
Lalmohan babu went back that day with an aching hand. Over the next two months, his struggle to get his story completed led to the appearance of calluses on two of his fingers. Thank goodness Feluda did not have to leave Calcutta during those months. He was called in to help solve the mysterious murder of Kedar Sarkar, but he did not have to travel beyond Barrackpore to make enquiries. Lalmohan babu was thus able to call on us twice a week to consult Feluda. His novel,
The Bandits of Bombay
, was published a week before Durga Puja began. The story had all the ingredients of a Hindi film, but all within reasonable limits. If a film was made from that story, one thing was for sure. One wouldn't have to reach for pain killers after seeing it.