Asides

Richa S Mukherjee On Debunking Western Dominance in Detective Fiction

Creating India’s favourite desi detective Prachand Tripathi is Richa S Mukherjee’s attempt at debunking the Western dominance over Detective Fiction. Mukherjee grew up believing that ‘detectives were city slickers, wearing trench coats, smoking pipes or then mad geniuses with dishevelled hair and odd quirks.’ But she realized how ‘there’s another earthy, homegrown kind living in small towns with big dreams, who neither have the luxury of indulging in apparels nor whims.’

Read an exclusive essay by the author of The Curse of Kuldhara about inserting small-town, regional narratives in a genre dominated by Western writers.

Imagine being immersed in the pages of a slick, edge-of-your-seat mystery. A shadow moves through a curtain of fog, a rich perfume fills your senses, a charismatic cadence quickening your heartbeat. A car’s headlights pin the man emerging from the darkness and out he walks wearing… pyjamas, Bata chappals and a monkey cap. Bit of a damp squib?! Or is this the not-so-desi part of you; brought up on a steady diet of detective icons like Sherlock Holmes Hercule Poirot and Perry Mason complaining of an incongruity?

We aren’t to be blamed really. Indians are a curious lot and from mysteries to makeup, a lot of aspirational things trickled down to us from the West. Looking back, summers were about sweating in front of large Symphony coolers, slurping icy khus sherbat and hiding in corners and crevices of nani and dadi’s houses, trying to unearth pointless secrets from the neighbourhood. The escape came from the likes of The Famous five, The Secret Seven, Nancy Drew, The Hardy boys, kids and young adults who were out there exploring, investigating, experiencing the world instead of being obedient, studious children, in a post colonial world, sitting at home with their parents. Did this unfamiliar world painted for us by exotic sounding authors spark some kind of fascination for looking westwards? Remember the neighbourhood lending library? It was the treasure trove where the ‘entertainment’ came from stained copies of Tinkle, Amra Chitra Katha and other comics but what was ubiquitous were the bookish adventures and thrills of young fair-haired detectives, something that was lacking in the Indian literary fare even though the prolific and much-loved Rabindranath Tagore amongst a few others literary stalwarts had risen to the task much earlier, through their short stories. Convent education, the mushrooming of English medium schools everywhere only helped the coming generations establish a comfortable and convenient relationship with the language that opened many locks in the world.

Despite growing up in a patriotic home with freedom fighters for ancestors, between the Upanishads and Veds and Panchatantra on one end and school books at the other, the exciting and turbulent world of literature for us came flowing from unknown foreign shores. Through Enid Blyton and Jules Vernes and Charles Dickens and HG Wells. Does that mean India did not have any thrillers or detective fiction back then, children or adults included? We did. But as a colony of the British, acclaimed English language writers such as Mulk Raj Anand, R K Narayanan, Raja Rao were pre occupied with writing about the real India, the common man, the strains and tumult of servility, the freedom struggle and our place in the world. Detective fiction and the mystery genre, thus, were not a priority in the larger scheme of literary things. This state of affairs also enabled the flood of English literature into libraries and schools creating easy access to the likes of Sherlock Holmes and Miss Marple rather than Feluda and Byomkesh Bakshi whose fame was restricted to Bengali speaking audiences, until they became charming to the rest of India, much later.

Interestingly and unbeknownst to many, Edgar Allan Poe is unofficially credited with birthing the genre of detective and crime fiction with the character of Auguste Dupin, well before his European contemporaries could, even though Britishers argue that the character of Inspector Bucket from Bleak House (1852) by Charles Dickens was the first British literary detective. Then there were other experiments in the genre with part detective part horror fare like Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde and The Mystery of a Hansom cab, another runaway success which fascinated readers all over the world. While the genre was evolving and thriving abroad, not to be left behind, some detective fiction was quietly brewing in a corner of colonial India as well, namely West Bengal. Darogar Daftor (1892) was the first Bengali detective fiction written by Priyanath Mukhopadhyay, a resident of Calcutta, the capital city. The initial trend was to have a character who was either in the police force or affiliated with the police force so as not to ruffle any feathers. Besides, due to the lack of any ‘scientific’ investigative methods at the time, it all came down to sharp intellect, observation and logical reasoning as tools for the detective. Satyajit Ray openly admitted that he was heavily influenced by Arthur Conan Doyle’s mastery while creating the universally loved and eccentric detective Sherlock Holmes and such was the indelible impression created by this phase of detective fiction that a certain kind of template emerged which was to go on to become an unofficial formula for this genre, in India and elsewhere. Namely, the story being told from the POV of a friend/ colleague/ confidante (Dr Watson, Topshe, Ajit Kumar Banerjee), the temperamental, sharp, flawed yet relatable problem solver, relegation of women characters to the dusty and ornamental corridors of the narrative and a sort of snobbish, upper class exclusive setting which regarded everything beyond ‘English sensibilities’ not very proper. Everyone else was portrayed as an outsider spotlighted in stereotypes of manner and attire. Do you recall OTT, flamboyant Maharajas, elephants, snake charmers, charcoal complexioned chauffeurs, ‘Orientals’ with long droopy moustaches? Even Agatha Christie’s cozy parlour room mysteries, loved by millions including me, feature only a well-heeled, elite, aristocratic life or the sheltered, upper middle class village life. As a writer, I know that we draw from the world around us and she was only borrowing from what she experienced. We can’t really expect her to set every mystery book of hers in a small town in India. Even many Indian writers saw the world through a British lens, choosing conformity over authenticity. But the wonderful thing about literature is that it is a forgiving, warm, inclusive and democratic space which eventually accommodates everything and everyone and that’s the spirit with which it should be consumed.

In the Indian context, I must mention that there was an iconoclast writer who, along with several others during his time, did recognize that it was time for detective fiction written in India to entertain against the backdrop of what our realities were, to not pander to colonial influences. To showcase all its grit and glory, tongas and topis, crumpled dhotis and crowded compartments. Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay created Byonkesh Bakshi the dhoti clad ‘truth seeker’ who didn’t even want to be called a detective, who made his own rules and went where his stories took him without adhering to any pre-defined formulas of the genre. In the last few decades, detectives of all hues and temperaments have emerged from every pocket of India, with many women writers in particular such as Anita Nair, Sujata Massey, Kiran Manral, Madhulika Liddle, Manjiri Prabhu, Kanchana Banerjee, Harshali Singh, Damyanti Biswas, breaking the glass ceiling and writing about crime, gore and detectives with skill and conviction, conveniently reserved as a male bastion. The literary world in the west experienced a similar shift and more recently, writers such as Paula Hawkins, Gillian Flynn and Lisa Jewel have completely turned the thriller genre on its head, something that was kickstarted by fantastic writers like Ruth Rendell (famous for Chief Inspector Wexford series), Dorothy L Sayers, Ann Cleeves and many others in the past when it was considered unwomanly to even write about detectives let alone become one. Now that is what I call- writing it out of the park!

I think I borrowed a pinch of this sentiment while creating Prachand Tripathi. A detective who is unlike what you expect him to be, yet relatable in many ways, a family man, a doting husband, a failure in some ways but harbouring big dreams, much like all of us. I remain humbly in awe of the authors and all the work that I have mentioned today, yet that is the beauty about inspiration and creativity. It allows you to expand your horizon beyond community, culture, cliches and cliques which might have come about due to various shaping circumstances. In the end, the simplicity and heartiness of the story and its characters live on and endear, something I’m hoping my desi detective is able to do with the Kanpur Khoofiya Pvt. Ltd. series. Of course, when Sherlock Holmes was killed off at the hands of Moriarty, Britons protested with black arm bands and went into mourning. I won’t be ambitious enough to dream of such fan mania, frankly shy Mr Tripathi would balk at the attention, but what I do know is that he is the kind of detective I would like to be. My obsession for detective fiction might have started with ginger beer on the banks of a lake in Yorkshire, but now armed with my desi buttermilk, I’d be willing to go to any lengths to solve a good, spine-tingling mystery, even as far as Kuldhara!

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