Bengali film Aranyer Prachin Probad introduces a new detective to an audience that has seen too many Byomkesh Bakshi and Feluda stories on screen. Director Dulal Dey is building a franchise around Aranya Chatterjee, a medical student who becomes an ‘accidental detective’.
Bangladeshi actress Rafiath Rashid Mithila, one of the leads in the film, grew up on a staple diet of Byomkesh Bakshi and Feluda stories from across the border.
Her favourite from among the two detectives was Prodosh Chandra Mitter aka Feluda, a dashing private investigator from 21 Rajani Sen Road in Ballygunge, Calcutta, who was brought to life by Satyajit Ray in books and films. She wanted to act in a modern, creative rendition of one of his stories.
“I had thought some Bengali director would write a character like Enola Holmes who outsmarts her big brother Sherlock in the 2020 Netflix film Enola Holmes. But nobody in the Bengali film industry could experiment with such an idea in a Feluda or Bakshi film,” Mithila told ThePrint over a call from Dhaka.
Instead of a Feluda retelling, however, she got to be part of a project that introduced a brand-new detective to the Bengali cinema and literary space. Talking about the film, Mithila said there has been an overdose of Byomkesh Bakshi and Feluda stories in Bengali cinema and OTT series—both West Bengal and Bangladesh desperately need a new fictional sleuth.
“Aranya Chatterjee is not even a trained detective when the film begins. The film shows how someone far removed from the world of crime and criminals can become a force of good against evil and win the day,” Mithila said.
An original plotline and the introduction of a brand-new character in the pantheon of fictional Bengali detectives made her sign the film, she added.
The accidental detective
Like Feluda, Aranya is tall, lean and, catering to the quintessentially Bengali ideal, “cultured”. Unlike Feluda, he is not a private investigator but a medical student who loves to play cricket and read.
Jeetu Kamal, acclaimed for his portrayal of Satyajit Ray in Aparajito (2022), plays Chatterjee. “Jeetu had done a fine job playing Satyajit Ray in Aparajito. He could very well have played Feluda also. He has the physicality of a true-blue Bengali detective,” director Dey said.
Kamal knows everything there is to know about Feluda, having consumed the popular detective stories in books and films from his childhood.
“From the name of his revolver to how much fee he charged for his first case to the first Feluda book where Lalmohan Ganguly, the popular crime novelist who would become his lifelong companion, first made an appearance, I know it all. Knowing Feluda intimately also helped me play Aranya Chatterjee differently,” Kamal said.
“I won’t stop at one film and one book. Aranya Chatterjee will have more outings in the near future.”
—Dulal Dey, director
For both Dey and Kamal, it was essential that Chatterjee was not similar to Feluda or Bakshi. “A doctor is murdered in a mufassil town in my film. And Aranya gets drawn to the incident like a medical student should at such a time, to investigate the body. The investigation of the crime is accidental. Aranya does not set out to become a hero, he becomes one,” said Dey.
Not content with just a film, Dey is all set to release the first adventure of his ‘accidental detective’ as a book.
“Feluda and Byomkesh Bakshi books have become films. Here, the film will become a book. It will be released soon. And I won’t stop at one film and one book. Aranya Chatterjee will have more outings in the near future.”
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Too many sleuths spoil the broth
According to Dey, it was important for Aranya to have his own idiosyncrasies and not look like a rip-off. As a debutant director, he could have taken the safer route and chosen a Feluda or Bakshi story.
That would have “bored the audience to death”, film critic Sharmi Adhikary said.
“After Ray, so many Bengali directors have retold the same stories of both the detectives on the big screen. They have not even tried to tweak the characters or plotlines to make them more contemporary,” she said.
Director Guy Ritchie’s take on Sherlock Holmes is more interesting to Adhikary. “In the two Holmes films they made as director and actor, Ritchie made [Robert] Downey Jr’s Holmes part clown, part genius—very unlike the Holmes we find in Arthur Conan Doyle’s books,” she said.
Adhikary also mentioned the TV series Sherlock, which aired on BBC One between 2010 and 2017 and starred Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes and Martin Freeman as his friend and associate, Dr John Watson.
“Cumberbatch’s Holmes is a man of today—he is someone you can meet at the metro station during your daily commute. Bengali directors should have learnt a thing or two from the way the iconic character was made contemporary,” she said.
A notable exception to this saturation in Bengali cinema’s mystery/thriller genre was director Arindam Sil’s 2019 film Jongole Mitin Mashi, starring Koel Mallick and Vinay Pathak. It was based on Hate Matro Tinti Din, a story by Suchitra Bhattacharya, and Mallick played a female detective in the film who had to balance her profession and her role as a homemaker.
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Not taking the easy way out
Feluda’s debut appearance was in the Bengali children’s magazine Sandesh in 1965 in the story Feludar Goendagiri by Satyajit Ray. Bakshi was three decades older, having first appeared in Saradindu Bandopadhyay’s 1932 short story Satyanveshi.
Satyajit Ray first brought Bakshi to the big screen in Chiriakhana (1967), followed by Feluda in Sonar Kella (1974).
Since then, both detectives have had many outings under different directors on multiple platforms, and have been played by several actors. “After Bengali actors Parambrata Chatterjee and Abir Chatterjee played both Feluda and Byomkesh Bakshi, it has become a joke in Kolkata that if a leading man in Bengali cinema has not played both these detectives, he is not a good enough actor. The industry is simply taking the easy way out and piggybacking on nostalgia,” Adhikary said.
This is precisely why Kamal chose Aranya as his next role. “I got many offers after playing Satyajit Ray in Aparajito, but I wanted to challenge myself. Becoming Feluda or Bakshi would have been relatively easy. But I did not become an actor to play it easy.”
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhhav)