Byomkesh Bakshi
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Feb 08 2015
Byomkesh Bakshi solved many a sordid crime in 1940s Calcutta. Now, says filmmaker Q, it's time to reinvent the underrated sleuth As the Feluda wave slowly faded with Satyajit Ray's death, there was a quick search for other op tions available in Bengal. And before you could say Bakshi, Byomkesh was out of the lockers, freshly unpacked and powdered and ready for some sleuthing action. Many directors tried him out, each pushing their own agenda, but somehow they couldn't create a new benchmark -find a thrilling new way of looking at the Bengali detective, push some digital, dynamic energy into a character that has absolutely nothing in common with life today . It was Ray, not the creator, Sharadindu Bandopadhyay , but the image maker, who should be credited for the proliferation of the Byomkesh Bakshi myth. Ray made Chiriakhana featuring Byomkesh with Uttam Kumar in the lead in 1967 -the ultimate Bengali imager working with the ultimate Bengali screen icon. Byomkesh was benchmarked. And, as any self respecting Bengali knows, benchmarking is everything.And Ray is the benchmark. Alright! And for both Sharadindu and Ray , the benchmark was Conan Doyle. The Holmesian techniques thrilled them -the minute eye for detail, the uneasy relation ship between the criminal and crime buster, the oddly homoerotic bonding of the detective and his assistant. But above all, it was the culture of the intelligent mind, always trying to find the crimes that were elevated, sublime, calling for the application of a brilliant mind to figure out riddles and clues. Sherlock had laid down the rules. And the post-colonial Bengali gentry were ready to play .
Ray had also begun to work on Feluda, who was to be the reigning king of Bengali sleuths. Feluda was born in 1965, just before Ray made Chiriakhana. Though he made just two Feluda films, Ray had written a number of super hit stories with the strapping young detective solving crimes around the country , juxtaposing his travels and a filmic vision with an existing classic structure. He cast Soumitra Chatterjee as the detective in the Feluda films, defining a look and feel that would be sacredly carried forward for decades.Byomkesh was practically forgotten during this time. Because Feluda was more modern, more with the times.
Because there was something else happening here. The readers had changed with the times. Calcutta wasn't the same as the 40s. Cleansed and gentrified, its language and culture sanitized by Tagorean principles, basking in the newly found middle class calm, Calcutta was no longer the den of grimy crimes that could be dramatized in fictional potboilers. Detectives were a thing of the past. So when Feluda came, he was specifically targeted at teenagers. As any follower of crime fiction knows, an overwhelming majority of crimes that need private detection happen to crimes of passion. However, the pressures of the marketplace, and the success of Feluda among kids, made sure that the most important Bengali detective never dealt with anything that had women involved. In fact, women are practically invisible in Feluda stories.
Byomkesh was older, from another time. The country wasn't free yet, and it was a cauldron of chaos.Calcutta was teeming with all sorts of people, a hothouse of dirty deeds and politics and passion. It was a metropolis, a blindingly beautiful city with its colonial architecture and tendencies. The millions of refugees post partition hadn't yet flooded the city . It was a trading centre, a political hub, with an active underground buzzing with hustlers from all over the place. Byomkesh was at home in this city , walking into the nooks and cranny , his dhoti never coming in the way between him and the criminal. He was a `Satyanyeshi', a seeker of truth, at a time when truth meant for something finite, but the boundaries were already fading. Through his stories, that thrilled readers of all ages and segments, Byomkesh tried to make sense of the great shifts in social morality of the times.
Sharadindu was also a lover of cinema, and had also worked as a screenplay writ er for Hindi films. The cinematic nuances in his work made his fiction pieces prime material for films. Filmmakers used many of his works over the years. But Byomkesh remained, in the public memory , as the first of his kind. He was an adventurer, before the times when the Bengali decided to keep to his drawing room and conduct all affairs of the world from that safe canopy.Byomkesh was fearless and manipulative, a believer in alchemy and astrology , unravelling problems with logic, and often with mysticism, creating a deadly combination of oriental and occidental methods. This was a throwback to the creator's love for alternate realities. Sharadindu was a follower of eastern mysticism and astrology .He has often written about his fascination with the world of the dead, and often these references popped up in Byomkesh stories.With his beautiful and witty wife Satyabati, his friend and partner Ajeet, and his decidedly Bengali ways, Byomkesh was a full character, living his life as a truthseeker without any qualms.
Sharadindu had once told a friend that he has done an astrological chart for Byomkesh. According to his calculations, Byomkesh would be a successful detective alright but would never be able to make a lot of money or be a huge star. The writer was obviously being cheeky and self critical, but Byomkesh has actually always remained second best in the Bengali world of detection. Though the heat of his stories and the complexity of the world he inhabits lend themselves to soaring heights of adventure and thrill, we still haven't found the way to show this on-screen.
