THE TWO FAMOUS HEROES OF SATYAJIT RAY
About Professor Shonku
Shonku’s birth in the magazine Sandesh precedes Feluda’s. In 1961, the first story, Byomjatrir Diary, was published. Ray wrote 40 Shonku stories; the last was in 1991. Characters that are a constant presence in most of Shonku’s stories Prahlad, his servant; Shonku’s clairvoyant acquaintance, Nokur Babu; his scientist friend Saunders and neighbour Avinash Babu. Dhritiman Chatterjee plays Professor Shonku in the first film. Who is Feluda?
Detective Feluda’s real name is Prodosh C Mitter. The first story, Feludar Goendagiri (1965), was published in the Rays’ family magazine, Sandesh. Feluda’s cousin Topesh and writerfriend Lalmohun Ganguly were key members of his team. Actor Soumitra Chatterjee was the first Feluda on the big screen. Bollywood star Shashi Kapoor has also played the role. So far, there have been nine Feluda feature films. from the Ramayana (including Ram, Hanuman), politicians, swadeshi activists. In some lost poems, he also poked fun at Lord Curzon, who was then the Viceroy. It was good-humoured satire without malice, but it spared nobody.” Ray’s story and Sandip Ray’s film is in keeping with that tradition.
This film on Professor Shonku is also a change of gears for Sandip Ray. After his father’s death in 1992, he has been directing mainly Feluda films – he has done seven – based on Ray’s famous detective. [Since 2003, Sandip Ray has also been the editor of Sandesh.] “It was the right time…. Dhritiman [the veteran actor playing the lead role] is also at the right age to play Professor Shonku. He is sensitive, sophisticated, erudite….” says the director. Were there any adjustments to be made while transporting the character from the book to the screen as there was in the case of Feluda? In a book Aami aar Feluda (Feluda and Me, 2006), an account of his working on the Feluda films with his father, Sandip Ray had let the reader in on a hilarious aspect of the filming.
“Feluda’s eyes are supposed to be brilliant, but Soumitra kaka’s [actor Soumitra Chatterjee] eyes were not giving the required look because he has small eyelashes,” writes Sandip Ray. “Father toyed with the idea of using false eyelashes on him. Ultimately, we used a highlighter over the eyelid to make Soumitra’s eye Satyajit Ray ran the parallel universes of Shonku and Feluda since the ’60s and distributed his likes and dislikes between the two characters. “What he hated, Feluda hated. Integrity was important to both and intellectual dishonesty was not to be borne,” says Sandip Ray. “And likewise for Professor Shonku. Baba had foreign friends and so did Shonku.”
But there was one difference. Feluda’s adventures in Gangtok, Varanasi, Lucknow were set in places Ray had actually travelled to. Shonku’s settings – Congo,
Rio de Janeiro, the Taklamakan desert – were more fantastical as for these he was relying on imagination. Shonku was situated in places Ray wanted to go. “When he was writing, these were pre-google days, he had to be dependent on friends to send him maps and postcards of these places. But they did not arrive on time. He was under constant pressure of missing the deadline,” says Sandip Ray.
Shonku’s attitude to his work, too, not surprisingly, is Ray-like. Says Sandip Ray: “Shonku was old school definitely. He was eager for new things. His inventions may be the cottage industry kind but the duplication of his inventions was not possible”. None of the Shonku’s inventions were made in a factory or released in the market. They were made for research or one could say, for his own pleasure. He also did not feel that working in a lab in a small city was a disadvantage to unlocking the mysteries of science.
“Does discovering mean going around the world like a top? No, you can do it at home,” says Sandip Ray with a laugh, “though in this film, as in the original story, Shonku is stretching himself by going to Brazil.” And in an important departure from the all-male world of his father’s literary fiction, Sandip Ray promises there will be in the film, women too. Women scientists to be precise, and Brazilians to boot.