Replacing Jatayu

Sandip Ray’s next Feluda film waits, because the perfect actor to play a key role is so difficult to find.

Picture this: a short, stout man doing warm-up exercises in the middle of a desert with the setting sun behind. This was the iconic shot of “Jatayu”, the pen name of Lalmohan Ganguly, a character in Satyajit Ray’s Feluda film Sonar Kella.

Jatayu, a bestselling thriller-writer and companion of the private detective Feluda, was sketched so perfectly by Satyajit Ray in his literary and celluloid works that the character has become a handicap for his son Sandip Ray.

The son, who has filmed quite a few Feluda stories, tried his best to fill the void left by the original actor Santosh Dutta with actor Bibhu Bhattacharya. With the recent death of Bhattacharya, however, Sandip Ray now has the near-impossible task of finding a convincing new Jatayu.

The hero of the stories, Feluda, real name (in the stories) Pradosh C Mitter, meets Jatayu in Sonar Kella, which is not among Satyajit Ray’s first films in the series. But Dutta’s physical appearance and mannerisms caught Ray’s fancy so effectively that Ray’s Jatayu came to resemble Santosh Dutta. The fictional Feluda, too, came to resemble Soumitra Chatterjee, who played him.

Santosh Dutta as Jatayu, is etched on the audience’s collective memory even today. Dutta was just right to play the short, stout, balding, middle-aged writer with a moustache. Part of Jatayu’s role in these stories is to act as comic relief, Many fans feel he is irreplaceable.

“Lalmohan Ganguly alias Jatayu had typical Bengali mannerisms, along with certain physical traits,” says Sandip Ray. He had planned a hunt for a new Feluda, having cast Sabyasachi Chakraborty in three films. A hunt for Jatayu was not planned. “It’s more difficult to find a Jatayu than a Feluda,” he admits, “because of the unique characterisation by my father.”

“Jatayu was a creation of Satyajit Ray’s creative genius and Santosh Dutta’s extraordinary acting talent,” says Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay, a noted writer of children’s fiction, who says he has not seen any of the later Feluda films by Sandip Ray. “It’s because of Dutta’s extraordinary wit that he could deliver a comic shot so naturally. It takes great wit to make other people laugh.” Mukhopadhyay believes that no Dutta-replacement will be acceptable to older audiences, but that younger audiences will adapt to a new Jatayu.

Novelist Sunil Gangopadhyay points out that the earlier Feluda stories by Satyajit Ray did not include Jatayu. Post-Sonar Kella, he says, the series was given a new dimension by the introduction of this character. With Dutta, “Jatayu has become ingrained in the Bengali psyche,” he says. Gangopadhyay believes that Dutta’s replacement, Bibhu Bhattacharya, in the recent Feluda movies was far from being a natural fit despite being accepted by the audience. An ardent fan of Satyajit Ray, Gangopadhyay says Sandip Ray’s Feluda series is more technically advanced than his father’s films on the same subject, though it fails to match the lyrical content created by the elder Ray.

Sandip Ray is currently busy with post-production work for his next film, Royal Bengal Rahasya, which is to be released in December. “After the release of Royal Bengal Rahasya,” he says, “I shall be taking a two-year break from Feluda and will look for my new Feluda and Jatayu.” In the interim, he intends to work on other projects — not, one imagines, by choice.