Complete Adventures of Feluda Vol. 1

As a child, I loved—and still love—reading the stories of Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, and the Hardy Boys.

But my favorite was Feluda, a series of mystery stories or novellas created by ace filmmaker Satyajit Ray.

Ray’s Feluda stories revolve around a fictional detective called Feluda, who travels across India’s vibrant landscapes, from the caves of Ajanta Ellora in the west, to Jaipur in the north, to Chennai in the south, to many more, and outside India too.

Ray’s detective stories are well rooted in Indian culture, very clean, and virtually without any “Adult” content, and only a bit of… show more.

I suppose few people planning to visit London would use the stories of Sherlock Holmes as a travel guide. Today’s London bears little resemblance to the city the famous detective worked in. Feluda, the creation of India’s best-known arthouse filmmaker Satyajit Ray, is the Kolkata equivalent to Holmes. Ask any Bengali, she/he is likely to know the many short stories featuring PI Pradosh C. Mitter aka Feluda. Like the Holmes catalogue, the Feluda stories, written between 1965 and 1995, are now a little quaint, but then, so is Kolkata. The chasm between the literary view and the lived reality of… show more.