Feluda, or Pradosh Chandra Mitra [Mitter], is a fictional Bengali Private investigator starring in a series of Bengali novels of Indian fictional detective novels and short stories written by Indian Bengali film director and writer Satyajit Ray. The detective resides at 21 Rajani Sen Road, Ballygunge, Kolkata, West Bengal, India. Feluda first made his appearance in a Bengali children’s magazine called Sandesh in 1965, under the editorialship of Satyajit and Subhas Mukhopadhyay. His first adventure was Feludar Goendagiri.
Feluda is often accompanied by his cousin, who is also his assistant, Tapesh Ranjan Mitter (affectionately called Topshe by Feluda), who serves as the narrator of the stories. From the sixth story, Sonar Kella (The Golden Fortress), the duo are joined by a popular thriller writer Jatayu (Lalmohon Ganguli).
Feluda has had been filmed at times, with the character been played by Soumitra Chatterjee, Sabyasachi Chakrabarty, Ahmed Rubel, Shashi Kapoor, Abir Chatterjee, Parambrata Chatterjee and Tota Roy Chowdhury. Satyajit Ray directed two Feluda movies — Sonar Kella (1974) and Joi Baba Felunath (1978). Sandip Ray made a new Feluda film series (continuation of the original series) on Feluda’s adventures which started from Baksho Rahashya (1996). In this series he made ten TV films and six theatrical films in Bengali on the character. Sandip Ray also made a stand-alone Feluda film Badshahi Angti (2014) which was intended to be the first film of a reboot series, but the series was cancelled and Sandip Ray came back to the previous film series.
Satyajit Ray 2 May 1921 – 23 April 1992 was an Indian film director, scriptwriter, documentary filmmaker, author, lyricist, magazine editor, illustrator, calligrapher, and music composer. He is widely considered to have been one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, celebrated for works such as The Apu Trilogy (1955–59), The Music Room (1958), The Big City (1963) and Charulata (1964). Ray was born in Calcutta which was prominent in the field of arts and literature. Starting his career as a commercial artist, he was drawn into independent filmmaking after meeting French filmmaker Jean Renoir and viewing Vittorio De Sica’s Italian neorealist film Bicycle Thieves (1948) during a visit to London.
