Prakash Ray’s quiet world is turned upside down when he receives an invitation from his reclusive uncle, Rajendra Mukherjee. In the middle of a violent storm, Prakash finds himself in a secluded bungalow with strangers gathered to celebrate Mukherjee’s birthday. A murder occurs and everyone is suspect. Welcome to Bhaskar Chattopadhyay’s Penumbra (Fingerprint!) where nothing is as it seems. The 38-year-old Bengaluru based author talks of his fascination for crime thrillers among other things. Excerpts.
Can you tell me about the genesis of penumbra?
Right from my childhood, I’ve been a big fan of detective fiction. The Holmes, Poirots, Marples and Feludas have always captured my imagination, and even as I grew up, they never let go. I love the world these characters come from, I like their superior intelligence, their logical mind, their analytical skills, their keen sense of observation. I also like the way they unravel the mystery and solve the puzzles. As an individual, I’ve always loved puzzles. And these stories gave me the perfect opportunity to quench my thirst for baffling problems. My writing career began with translations, and when I started writing my own novels and stories, I wanted to write detective fiction with a detective of my own.
Penumbra is my tribute to the good old days of detective fiction.
PenumbraandPatangare worlds apart. Comment
Yes, they are, and I’m glad you said that. I think judging one by the other would be a bit unfair, because they are from different genres. My first novel Patang was a serial killer thriller, written for the screen. Which is why, you find that it is extremely fast-paced. Penumbra , on the other hand, is a cosy crime. It has its own pace, and its own space, and within that space, it is thrilling in its own way. While the detective in Patang is a gun-wielding cop for all practical purposes, the detective in Penumbra is a person who likes to sit in a chair and think.
Would you describePenumbraas in the tradition of Agatha Christie's closed door mystery?
Yes, of course. The story takes place in a bungalow, which has been cut off from civilization, thanks to a massive storm. The story takes place within a period of 24 hours, and within the confines of the bungalow, which heightens the tension between the characters. Everyone is a suspect, everyone had motive to commit the crime, almost everyone had opportunity too. There are clues hidden throughout the book, and the reader has a fair chance to unravel the mystery and identify the culprit.
Could you comment on the title?
The word penumbra is essentially a term borrowed from physics, optics, to be precise. We had read about it in school. It is the name given to the partially-shaded region between light and shadow. In the context of the story, the term would symbolize a piece of information that could either be true or false, or an enigmatic half-truth whose only purpose is to confuse and confound. Once you read the book all the way to the end, you’ll realize how apt the title is.
What fascinates you about crime fiction?
I think it is the hunt that fascinates me. All good crime stories in the world are essentially hunting stories, where there’s a predator and a prey, where there’s tracking and stalking, sometimes a bait, and a final thrilling, hair-raising showdown. These aspects of a story fascinate me. I’m also very keen on understanding not only how the detective or the cop studies the mind of the criminal, but also how the criminal studies the mind of the sleuth – almost as if there’s an invisible and often unstated thought-exchange going on between the two. Jim Corbett once said unless you understand the mind of the animal you are after, you cannot hope to hunt him or her down. The same principle applies in crime fiction as well – and I find that extremely appealing.
Even though set in the present, the novel has an old world charm about it. Comment
As I said earlier, Penumbra is my tribute to the golden age of detective fiction. There is a deliberate attempt to incorporate the old-world charm you are referring to. One of the problems I find in writing a good detective story today is the absolute incapacity of the modern human mind to be amazed. Why do you think magic shows are going out of vogue? Why don’t we go to the circus anymore? Why don’t we get scared so easily anymore? That’s because thanks to special effects and VFX, we have seen such impossibly beautiful visuals, and such fascinating experiences of fantastic worlds have come within our reach, that nothing has been left to imagination anymore. Amidst all the clutter, it is sometimes wise to take a step back and lose ourselves in that old world that had once given us so much pleasure. At the same time, I am careful to see that my story is not detached from the world of today.
Which is why, you’ll find that my characters are all real and inhabit the world as we see today, but the spirit of the story is drenched in old-world charm.
You mentioned this is the first of a series. Did you create these characters with a series in mind or did it happen in the telling?
Well, a bit of both, now that I think about it. I did dream of having a detective series of my own, but writing one mystery novel after another is a tough thing to do. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to pull it off. But once I started writing the story and as the story evolved and finally came to an end, I realized that I had inadvertently opened a door for another story.
It happened very organically, I didn’t have to force it at all. But I must also haste to add that I’m going to ensure that all the novels in the series are standalone stories by themselves, and one can read any one of them before the others without any fear of losing out on anything.
Why did you set the book in Calcutta?
That is a setting I know well, one that I am familiar with. I know the exact details of the locations that I have described. But I must also say that the subsequent stories in the series will be set in different places.
Are you ready with the next novel in the series? What can readers expect?
Yes, I’ve written it, and Hachette is publishing it. It is set in a remote mining town in Jharkhand. The thrill has been pumped up a notch, it is not a closed-door mystery anymore, but it still features the good, old thinking detective. It should come out in February next year. Hachette is also publishing the third novel in the same series, which I’m yet to write.
Byomkesh Bakshi and Feluda are big shoes to fill.... Are you nervous?
Well, truth be told, I’m not trying to fill any shoes – Feluda’s or Bakshi’s, or anyone else’s for that matter. If you think about it, Satyajit Ray didn’t aim to fill any shoes either. Although Feluda was modelled on Sherlock Holmes, Ray gave him an individual identity of his own. The same happened with Byomkesh. Bengali literature was crawling with sleuths before Byomkesh Bakshi came to the scene, but what set him apart was the fact that unlike the creators of these numerous detectives, Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay never tried to ape western fiction in writing Byomkesh Bakshi’s character, nor did he try to replicate the stories. Once you create a detective and give him his own identity, his own eccentricities, habits, principles and wit, you’ve created something new, something fresh – and readers would welcome him with open arms. So, to answer your question, yes, I am nervous – but not because I’m trying to fill big shoes left by such giants, but because I have created my character with a lot of love, and like every parent who sends his or her child out into the world for the first time, I’m quite nervous, and excited at the same time. I hope my child does well, I hope he finds his own place in the beautiful world he’s stepped into.
