Bengali cinema has an addiction problem—Now, Byomkesh, Feluda detective-verse about to expand

When Dibakar Banerjee tried to contemporarise Byomkesh merging 3 stories to make the 2015 Hindi film starring Sushant Singh Rajput, it wasn’t stomached easily.

Collage by Manisha Yadav | ThePrint

After decades of Feluda and Bymokesh Bakshi on the big screen and of late on OTT, Bengali entertainment is now offering a new character in the detective-verse for Hoichoi Studios. His name is Dipak Chatterjee and he is stepping in to save Bengal from the villain Badami Hyena.

Bengalis have a detective fiction addiction and it has not waned in any decade. The audience’s hunger is akin to a bottomless pit that is fed at regular intervals by both films, and OTT shows, and each is a bigger hit than the other. “I think the everlasting popularity of detective and crime fiction is because of how the Bengalis like to perceive themselves.

“Through detective fiction, Bengalis get a chance to rediscover themselves as the sharp, intelligent Bangali bhadralok,” said Parambrata Chatterjee, who plays Feluda in Zee 5’s Shabaash Feluda. The nostalgia is part of every frame of nearly every Feluda or Byomkesh venture, from clothes, to the Calcutta before the 70s and set design and life itself.

And every new season, every new generation, tweaks are made to the plot and the characters. With Dipak Chatterjee, this enduring Bengali fascination has got fresh legs and hoping to harvest the new generation of addicts. What’s not clear, however, is if the new, improved, edgy 21^st century twists will work for the audience.

In Zee5’s Shabaash Feluda, released earlier this year, the lead finally uses a mobile phone. The Hoichoi Studio’s film will have Chatterjee lock horns with his creator, and Eken Babu is a balding, eccentric sleuth who is a callback to Hercule Poirot.

Created in the 1950s by Bengali writer Samarendranath Pandey under his pen name Swapan Kumar, Dipak can use two revolvers at the same time, and even the British seek him out to solve their cases.

“There is a lot of magic and spectacle, and I wanted to not just make another detective film, but introduce the world of Swapan Kumar, where Dipak is also seen questioning and debating with his creator,” said Debaloy Bhattacharya, the director of the film. He wanted to do something against the grain, so he decided to opt for the world of Swapan Kumar, something that was, in his words, a far cry from the “residue of Victorian logic and detection”. He wanted to add quirk, and imagination.

With Dipak Chatterjee, Hoichoi is looking for a commercial hattrick of sorts.

The Eken — Ruddhaswas Rajasthan emerged as the first big hit in the Bengali industry this year, earring Rs 3 crore in just 25 days. In 2022, the first installment, The Eken, had to compete against the Yash-starrer extravaganza KGF, but still managed to rake in Rs 2 crore at the box office. People beyond West Bengal too made a beeline to watch Eken solve crimes in Rajasthan, a feat earlier done only by Satyajit Ray’ Feluda in Shonar Kella (1974) and its remakes.

“Everybody believed the film would bomb. It took me six months to finally convince Srikant Mohota, creative head of SVF. And now it’s the first film of Hoichoi Studious,” said Bhattacharya. Popular streaming platform Hoichoi is owned by Shree Venkatesh Films (SVF), a Kolkata-based production company. Bhattacharya is not new to detective films. In 2018, he made Biday Bymokesh, in an attempt to give the eponymous hero a farewell. But the attempt was not successful, as people only started clamouring for more of one of their favourite detectives.

Bhattachraya, who is not a fan of the churning out of Feluda and Byomkesh shows at regular intervals, decided to do things differently. “It is meant to be a complete shocker,” said the director with a mischievous smile.

Among the makers too, there is a near scuffle to oblige the box office and viewers. It is after all one of the safest commercial genres for filmmakers, because people flock to watch these films, especially when released around Durga Pujo or Poila Baisakh, or even Kali Pujo.

Even now, two different versions of Sharadindo Bandopadhayay’s 1952 novel Durga Rahasya are being shot. Srijit Mukherjee, who adapted Byomkesh for Hoichoi as a hit web series, finished his version of Durga Rahasy in Madhya Pradesh. Bengali actor Dev is also shooting for a film on the same story for his production company Dev Entertainment Ventures at the same location in MP. He plays Byomkesh.

“The situation is ludicrous and really getting out of hand with this whole making of detective shows and films situation,” said senior film critic Aniruddha Dhar, almost laughingly.

Roots in literature

It all started when two Bengali men managed to beat Scotland Yard by five years to establish the world’s first fingerprint bureau in Calcutta in 1897. The murder of Hridaynath Ghosh, manager of Kathalguri Tea Estate was solved in August that year, through use of fingerprints. Hemchandra Bose, who joined the Bengal Police Service as a sub-inspector in 1889, and Azizul Haque, a mathematics prodigy at Presidency College and later a sub-inspector, become real life heroes, along with their mentor, Sir Edward Richard Henry.

“With a history like that, it is almost natural that people loved the whole idea of a detective who is quintessentially Bengali,” said Kalpan Mitra, who plays Topshe in Hoichoi’s Feluda Pherot (2020) and Feludar Goyendagiri (2022).

In the world of popular Bengali literature, the detective’s journey started in 1932 with Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay’s iconic Byomkesh Bakshi who referred to himself as ‘satyanweshi’ or a truth-seeker. Bakshi is known for his proficiency with observation, logical reasoning, and forensic science, which he uses to solve complicated cases, usually murders in Calcutta. The adventures of the dhoti-wearing, tall detective was also made into a Doordarshan show in 1993, where Rajit Kapoor played Byomkesh.

Byomkesh would methodically solve crimes taking place in the city. He does not use a gun, is proficient in English, Hindi and Bengali, and drinks doodh cha, or milk tea, as the Bengalis call it, and smokes. He despises the term detective, instead referring to himself as ‘satyanweshi’. He is shown to be around 23 in his first appearance in the book. Feluda aka Pradosh Chandra Mitra, was created, almost three decades later by Satyajit Ray. The polymath, multi-talented Ray wrote the character of Feluda in 1965 for a children’s magazine, Sandesh.

Sandesh was started by Ray’s grandfather Upendra Kishore Roychowdhury, and is now over a 100 years old. It was revived by Ray in 1961, after a slump of 27 years, beginning in 1934. It is synonymous with not just children’s literature, but as essential part of the mosaic of Bengali culture and tradition.

Feluda is 27 when introduced by Ray. A 6’3”, Ray’s character, unlike Byomkesh, wears trousers and shirts. He lies closer to the British sleuth Sherlock Holmes, with his athletic build, martial arts prowess and his ‘magajsastra’ or analytical and reasoning skills. A quintessential Feluda story always ends in a drawing room discussion of how the murder was solved, akin to the Poirot and Miss Marple stories by Agatha Christie.

People often forget that while Byomkesh was more for adult readers, Feluda was what you can call ‘teenage’ fiction, and it was an instant favorite among everyone,” said Madhuja Mukherjee, Associate Professor of Film Studies at Jadavpur University. “It was a tradition to gift and read Feluda, especially during Durga Pujo,” she added.

Ray turned his wildly popular literary creation into movies with Sonar Kella (1974) and Joi Baba Felunath (1978) where veteran actor Soumitra Chatterjee for the first time brought Feluda to life on the silver screen. Since then, many, including Ray’s son Sandip Ray, have been consistently making and remaking the existing Feluda stories over and over again. But both Byomkesh and Feluda have remained rooted to the times they were created in, even as the decades kept advancing.

Nostalgia, resistance to change

The most recent Feluda of director Arindam Sil in Zee5, however, is contemporary. Set in 2017, Shabaash Feluda has the detective using the mobile phone, albeit sparingly, and his nephew, Topshe is shown in a relationship. But Bengalis do not generally take kindly to their literary icons being ‘modernised’ or contemporarised. “I am a purist and would really not want Feluda to be using a phone. But I also understand that it is inevitable in a way,” said Professor Krishnokoli Hazra, who teaches at a Kolkata college. It then comes as no surprise that Sil faced criticism on social media, when the trailer of the show came out.

Hazra is not the only one who does not like the idea of a mobile-totting, contemporary Feluda. It is the general mood of the Bengali-speaking audience whose love for both Ray and Feluda can be seen scattered across various spaces in the city. Abar Baithak, a popular café in Kolkata’s Jodhpur Park is themed after Feluda — film posters, furniture and name plaques inspired by the iconic character and the film. Feluda is in the very air of Kolkata, as is Byomkesh.

The burning question is, who will start the process of refashioning the Bangali sleuths, and how kindly the Bengali audience will take the ‘tampering’ of their nostalgia and detective sleuths.

Such is the resistance to change or contemporarisation that Dibakar Banerjee merged three Byomkesh stories together to make the 2015 Hindi film Byomkesh, starring Sushant Singh Rajput. It was not stomached easily. “I was the line producer for the film, and Dibakar had such a great vision. But people were extremely upset by it,” said Sil.

Everyone agrees that the nostalgia for the past among Bengalis is a strong emotion, that is over and above everything else. “In the last few years, we have not had many things to be proud of as a community, except for people like Ray, Amartya Sen, Jyoti Basu and Sourav Ganguly. So there is a sense of comfort in reminiscing the good ol’ days,” said Chatterjee. People like to switch on to a beloved character, solve crime, and restore order in a chaotic world.

Arindam Sil’s office is like a shrine to detective fiction, films and characters and filled with memorabilia. Right next to his seat is a small white board with dates marking the beginning of shoot of his films and shows and another that noting their release—most are detective ones.

The target audience

It is not just the Bengali men who have voraciously consumed detective sleuths and fiction. Women too are ardent readers. But the fan world is mostly comprised of a very specific group of educated Hindu upper caste Bengali men. Mukherjee points out how a look at the surnames would give away that even the actors and makers of the series and films belong to a certain privileged section of the society, and are very Kolkata-centric.

The women too are conspicuous by their absence from this world of detectives. “I was heavily trolled when I cast Sauraseni Maitra for the film, because people assumed that I am creating a love interest for Feluda,” said Sil. Maitra plays an Intelligence Bureau officer, Rinchen Gompo. The lukewarm response shows audiences even in 21^st century essentially want to see women as side characters, never part of the world of logic, reasoning and detection.

“There is an imagined identity of the middle class as an intellectual person. I think Feluda tickles all the right places for the Bengali men,” said Mukherjee.

Sil’s Mitin Mashi is the only female Bengali detective film in Bengali so far. The character created by Suchitr Bhattacharya was played by the popular Bengal actress Koel Mullick, and the film was a box office success. Sil also happens to be the only director who has juggled four different detective characters — Byomkesh, Feluda, Shabor and Mitin Mashi. But when it comes to bringing in diversity of class or caste or even gender, the detective films and series have not even grazed the tip of the iceberg. It is still debating bringing in mobile phones or not.

The men in Bengali detective shows and films

The men who play the beloved characters are as immortal as the characters themselves. It is a rite of passage of sorts for male actors in the Bengali industry to be cast as a detective. Abir Chatterjee, who was barely a year into the industry, was over the moon when director Anjan Dutt called him to play Byomkesh in his films. It was last portrayed by ‘mahanayak’ of the Bengali film industry, Uttam Kumar. Parambrata Chatterjee began his acting career in 2002 and played Feluda’s sidekick and nephew Topshe in Sandip Ray’s Bombaiyer Bombete. Anirban Chatterjee essayed small roles before finally becoming a breakout star with Eken Babu, the web series. Even Anirbam Bhattcharya, the current Byomkesh for Hoichoi’s web series, tasted his first critical and commercial success playing the villain Bishan Roy in the detective film Eagoler Chokh (2016).

“Soumitra sir once told me that despite playing a wide range of characters, people would ultimately call him Feluda,” said actor Abir Chatterjee. Abir is the only actor to have played three detective characters — Feluda, Byomkesh, and now Dipak Chatterjee. But with the endless versions and actors portraying Feluda and Byomkesh, from Uttam Kumar to Anirban Bhattacharya, it is indeed a mystery of sorts to detangle and list the various cinematic adaptations and the actors in a logical, comprehensive manner.

Abir’s tryst with Byomkesh started very early in his film career in 2010, when he first appeared as the ‘satyaniveshi’ in Anjan Dutt’s Byomkesh Bakshi, followed by Abar Byomkesh (2012) and Byomkesh Phire Elo (2012). Soon, he became Arindam Sil’s Byomkesh in Har Har Byomkesh (2015). In this, Byomkesh explores his relationship with his wife Satyabati. “I wanted to explore the romantic side of Byomkesh too. After all, a detective can want and experience love too.” said Sil.

Abir, however, did face resistance, as murmurings went about the fact that he also played Feluda for Sandip Ray’s Badshahi Angti (2014). Consequently, the actor stayed away, and focussed on being Byomkesh instead. In Hoichoi, the Bengali OTT app, Anirban Bhattacharya has been playing Byomkesh for a web series since 2017, and it has catapulted him to fame, even earning him the role of Anirudh Chatterjee opposite Rani Mukherjee, in Mrs Chatterjee VS Norway (2023).

The new entrants and experiments

Sujan Dasgupta’s Eken Babu was not the most popular detective on text. But SVF saw a goldmine in the character, and bought rights to it. He was almost an immediate opposite to both Feluda and Byomkesh. He was short, not particularly good-looking and would also land up in comic situations of his own doing. But when it came to solving a crime, he was sharp and quick-witted. He was the ‘kaku’ or uncle in the quintessential Bengali neighborhood, one wouldn’t expect to solve crimes, but he did, repeatedly.

With Eken Babu, Hoichoi managed to do the impossible — create a detective figure even more wildly popular than the OGs, at least in terms of commercial success. The show has now become two full length feature films, the latest of which was released in April this year to roaring success. The experiment with the Eken installments was simple: the rights to the character were bought, while films were entirely new stories.

Hoichoi expanded the scope of detectives through its platform. “It is a ready story after all. But sometimes, it is the character that is intriguing, like Eken Babu, and we can work with that.” said Srikant Mohta, the creative head of Shree Ventakesh Films, the company that owns Hoichoi.

The other detective is Goenda Shabor, played by Saswata Chatterjee, most popularly known for playing the serial killer Bob Biswas in Kahaani (2012).

Goenda Shabor first appeared in Abar Shabor in 2015, and set the hearts of detective-loving Bengalis and box office racing. The success of the first film made Sil make two more Shabor films, based on the stories of Srishendu Mukhopadhyay. This was also the first instance when the popularity of the films made people take up reading the stories, and the new editions of the stories acknowledge the same.

With Dipak Chatterjee, Hoichoi is looking for a commercial hattrick of sorts, and Debaloy is hoping to break the uninterrupted flow of a formulaic, nostalgic viewing of Bengali detectives.

But will this all-consuming love for detectives be carried forward by Gen Z? No one quite knows the answer. “The new generation does not read. Their attention span is very low. So this might actually end with the millennials,” said Hazra. Debaoy, however, said that the youngsters like quirk and his detective might actually appeal to them.

“With the passing of age, you cannot be a Sherlock Holmes. He used to look at people and say he is a sailor. Now, we do not have fixed selves or identities and you cannot deduce anything from one’s appearance,” said Mitra. The Bengali detectives too might become obsolete, unless reinvented. But for now, both filmmakers and audience are enjoying the boom of detective shows and films.

(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)