Chalanta Chhaya

I always had the urge to read the fictions that first time introduced original detective stories to the Bengali readers. Infact one of my maternal uncles had a huge collection of Bishwa Chakra series but not being of age I didn't have the permission to read them during my visits there while I was young. Then as I grew old the deluge of Feluda, Byomkesh, Kiriti, Holmes, Father Brown, Poirot, Marple, Tommy & Tuppence, Parker Pyne novels seemed to erase me of the urge until very recently I chanced upon a site that was distributing free ebooks by Swapan Kumar. The dormant wishes seemed to get the better of me this time and I tried to gather as many of them as was available.

Now that I started with the 4th in the Bishwa Chakra series namely 'Chalanta Chhaya', I seem to be introduced to an entirely new age of detective fiction whose glimpses remained in Kiriti and Byomkesh. Set in the British India the adventure begins in the morgue of the Calcutta police where a deadbody was carried off by a cleverly planned scheme. That was the start after which a strange theft and several kidnappings raised a great hue and cry in the city. But these times, the society that carried out the operations left notes signed as Chalanta Chhaya. Soon private detective Deepak Chatterjee was summoned by police and he also receives a threat from the society Chalanta Chhaya both of which, no doubt, influences the investigator to carry on with the case with support from his freind Ratanlal. Then is the usual detective adventure though adventure gets the upper hand and there is nominal detection but the most notable part of the story is the fantastic concept that forms the main plot. The concept is fantastic enough if we remember the era when it was contrived and sitting at an age when adventure and mystery in fiction seemed to become synonymous with hollywood, I cannot but appreciate the originality of the plot that had, surely, hit the best seller category for the young readers.
Also the inside cover of the story bears a note of age restriction for the readers which is another revelation about the values and culture of that age.