The Case of the Fenced-In Woman

It was during one of my ramblings in the Starmark section of the South City Mall that I came across the titles of Perry Mason by Earl Stanley Gardner. Though the name of the creator and his creation was not new to me but never had I have the chance of going thru any of the novels previously. So a rapid cyber search got me introduced to the character but much of it remained unsaid till I bought this book and finished it in a hurry. Actually I bought this from a second-hand store as I'm quite doubtful about my experimentation with the 1st sample of any new series. So though I longed for the 'Velvet Claws' which I gather is the 1st Perry Mason story but I'd to be content with this among the limited inventory of the store's display. That this was a posthumous publication was only known to me after another of my cyber searches and so my ideas may not conform to that of the readers of Mason novels as I hold the belief that so late a novel might not reflect the true character of the dynamic lawyer as a saturation is bound to come at that period.

The story starts in Perry Mason's office where the US defence lawyer, famous for his investigations in murder mysteries, is presented with a rather unusual case by a Morley Eden. It was learnt that Mr. Eden had purchased a plot from some Lorring Carson and had employed the latter in constructing a building in the same plot. But no sooner than he started living, the ex-wife of Carson, Vivian was found to occupy a certain part of the house and seperated herself by a barbed wire fence running through the house so as to divide the same and the rest of the plot in two parts. This not only intrigued Eden but also annoyed him. It was then revealed that the portion where Vivian is now living was actually hers legally and Lorring Carson seemed to make a fraud sale to Eden. A frustrated Eden requested Mason's intervention and Mason, following his own line of enquiry thought it better to charge Lorring in a fraud case. But on the same day as the case was to be filed, Lorring Carson's stabbed body was found in the Eden side of the house and thus the case turned bizarre than ever. The problem seemed to multiply with the police accusing both Morley and Vivian in the murder and Perry found himself at sea when both his clients refused to divulge any information that may show him some light. If that was not all, Mason himself found to be trapped with indications of framing him during the course of events. Thus on the day of the hearing both his clients and Mason was tensed and the prosecuter seemed to have a solid case with piled up circumstantial evidences to hammer in the verdict against Morley-Vivian. Thus the stage is set for Perry not only to save the clients but also to unearth the mystery and guarantee a satisfactory ending.
The problem with this story is that the ending seemed a bit abrupt and less dramatic than what I had hoped. Also the final deductions seemed to be somewhat forced and a bit less convincing. Also Mason's urge to save his clients even when they might be at fault did not personally please me. Also Della Street and Paul Drake, the two persons without whom Pason novels lose completeness, didn't seem to be involved much in the story and so can't gather much about their character.

Colonel Samagra Vol I

Colonel Niladri Sarkar, the truth seeker as invented by Syed Mustafa Siraj held my fascination at a very young age. Maybe his Santa Claus appearance was the most lovably appealing feature that was so unnatarual for an investigator to me who used to associate a grim and serious looking soul with that profession. Though through times that outlook on the appearance of detectives changed as I grew more familiar with Holmes, Feluda, Byomkesh, Father Brown, Poirot, Marple, Tommy & Tuppence and Arjun but still this wonderful personality had always found a ready fan in me. Actually the fusion of a retired army officer with the characteristics of a genial grandfather held its charm to me and in the same way as people craves for the warmth of their grandparents, I also have a fondness for Colonel Niladri Sarkar.

So in the bookfair of 97 when I came across the consolidated volumes published by De's I couldn't resist the temptation of buying the 1^st one. But two disappointments awaited me, the 1^st one being that the stories did not seem to be chronologically ordered. But the more serious one was that it seemed the Colonel of my dream whose adventures in crime was supposed to be read with awe by readers of all ages seemed to have special cases reserved for the adult readers that immediately worsened my feelings. Actually I had always found the inclusion of adult content makes the crimes and motives somewhat unidirectional and the mystery portion is somewhat slightened.

The book starts with a novel titled 'Paragacha' or the weed, where the retired Colonel and his friend-cum-story narrator Jayanta, the journalist of Dainik Satyasevak, involves themselves in the murder of a call girl, Chandrika who again relates herself with a parallel case presented to Col. Sarkar by his acquintance Mr. Amarendra Singha Roy, of the scenic village of Rangatuli. The story starts with the Colonel and Jayanta attending a drama by Sourav on the express wish of the owner-cum-actor Indrajit Bannerjee. Chandrika was a member of the drama company and on their way home a visibly distressed Chandrika requested lift in their car. Though there was no serious conversation in the way but later Jayanta discovered that she had left her handbag in the car. On the next morning, Chandrika's murder was revealed and the Colonel sets off on the mission to unravel the secrets that points to the murderer and also the motive. Though the story had quite a number of twists but there are also several coincidences that makes the investigator's job quite easy. Interesitingly, the private eye and the ever bumbling acquintance of Colonel, whom the author has used as a refreshing relief, Haldarmoshai appears only in this story in the whole collection and I admit that this sincere and honest soul has been my favourite from the start. The second story is quite good but the name 'Phand' (Bengali for trap) gives away much of the excitement very early during the narration. 'Zero Zero Zero' involves attempt of sabotage that is cleverly foiled by the veteran Colonel. 'Sonar Damaru' seems to be a classic case where Colonel's loses his voice temporarily due to severe cold and cannot prevent dual murders before catching the criminal and a gang of smugglers. I think 'Prem, Hatya ebong Colonel' is probably the best and the shortest of the lot in the collection where also for a change, a third person narration is used and the entire plot with its solution evolves magnificently and quite unlike the other stories. Infact the third person narration seems to be deliberate, else the story would have lost much of its novelty. The naming of the story 'Khokan Gaache Maach Dhorte', has been taken from a Bengali nursery rhyme and is kind of synonymous with the way a mishap happens during a fishing hike which the Colonel again solves with the help of his intuitions. But again super simplification seems to mar the thrill in this story as much of the mystery behind the dissapearance of a mystic monk seems to be childishly explained. But in 'Janalar Neeche Ekta Lok', the brilliance of story telling masked the perpetrator(s) of crime masterfully and though it had appeared quite boring when I read it initially but its appeal seem to have increased with time. Actually what I think is as I knew the story beforehand, this time I could appreciate the literary content and how poetically it had been handled throughout, quite unlike a traditional detective story. Also in 'Dui Nari', though the narration is in 1^st person but this time it is not Jayanta but a married writer Gautam Chowdhury who involves himself in a case of theft while on a secret holiday with one of his lady fans. A deadbody worsens the situation more but when the criminal is unmasked, the tortuous way of organizing the crime seems to be too far fetched. In 'Hangor', the mysterious happenings in a hotel named 'The Shark' at Chandanpore-on-sea on a rainy night followed by a deadbody in the premises of a political activist in the morning required Colonel's interference to solve the murder. The monsoon season adds the additional adventurous back drop to this story but here again the theme seems to be highly unrealistic. The plot in 'Kalo Pathar' is quite a good one but the use of supernaturals remained unexplained and of the two seances though one seemed to be staged but the reality regarding the other one remained a mystery till the very end. A bizarre series of murders in 'Trishule Rakter Daag' makes it highly interesting but how the Colonel gathered some clues are upto the readers to unravel. The final in the collection, 'Toy Pistol’ again would have been a highly interesting plot but it started in a very abrupt manner and seemed to conclude hurriedly without giving necessary time for the complexity of the plot to evolve significantly. Altogether the compilation is well balanced and if you love the character you, at least, won’t hate the book.

An interesting observation regarding Colonel adventures that highly contrasts with traditional detective fictions is that the retired Colonel doesn’t seem to be in the bad books of the police or the professionals and in fact a nice understanding seems to develop between the veteran crime solver and the local security in almost all cases. Infact there are instances where the local police and the Colonel both seek help of each other and the local security personnel in several cases seems actually happy to get the help of Colonel to unravel the bizarre happenings. This may be an automatic choice for the author owing to Colonel’s background but in any case, I personally liked the general trend of non-cooperation between professionals and amateurs in the trade being eradicated in the cases.

Shesh Anka

It was a time when I was of that age that movie watching was a privilege to me and so it surprised me when my parents insisted that I watch this one telecasted in Doordarshan (DD1 I think). My mother had a love of mystery movies and my father also shared the same sentiment. So while watching this movie for the 1^st time I was prepared to watch something of a suspense sort following the clear cut format of a case presented to a detective and the way he solves it through clues collected from odd places. That the same can be done in a completely different way with the viewers baffled as not only to the identity of the criminal but also to that of the investigator shows the ingenuity of both the story writer Raj Kumar Maitra and the director Haridas Bhattacharya. So when my mother presented this movie to my father as a birthday gift we were also equally thrilled to shelf this permanently in our house.

The story starts with the marriage arrangements between the wealthy Sudhangshu Gupta, a handsome but widowed young man and Soma Roy, the only daughter to Sir Haraprasad Roy, an honoured citizen of Calcutta. Parallel to that it is also shown that the butlers in Sudhangshu’s and Haraprasad’s house with an apparently fishy dealings with a Mr. Samaddar and Ms. Lata Bose. Samaddar seemed to possess more than one identity and appears to be the leader of the team who continuously instructs the three and also steals some documents from Sudhangshu’s house. Also in their conversation Burma and Imphal is mentioned very frequently and it is cited that both Sudhangshu and Haraprasad’s family had once been either the residents or had visited at least one of the two places. As the preparation of the marriage proceeds Lata is seen to appear in the guise of a distressed Kalpana Gupta and gets herself admitted to a cheap hotel very near the resident of an expert veteran criminal lawyer Suren Bannerjee. On the day of the marriage, Lata receives an anonymous letter, already a pre-planned move of Samaddar and reading it, rushes to Suren Bannerjee’s chamber where Samaddar was again present in the guise of Bannerjee’s client. The next scene takes us to the place of the marriage and as the rituals are about to be started Bannerjee enters and orders it to be stopped claiming that Sudhangshu’s 1^st wife is not dead and brings forward Lata adorned with Kalpana’s ornaments and asks Haraprasad to look into the matter. Samaddar too manages to involve himself in the confusion and insists the marriage to be stopped immediately. A rapid informal query ensues and the ACP, a close associate to Haraprasad is called. He soon finds that some ornaments from Sudhangshu’s house is missing but the post mortem report, death certificate and inquest report of Kalpana’s death is still present. But the Kalpana’s photographs and diaries have been replaced with Lata’s photographs and diaries whose handwriting does not match those of Kalpana. A terrible confusion ensues and a case is presented in the court against Lata’s claim and also charges of theft and illegal entry is brought against her. Samaddar finances Bannerjee to take up Lata’s case while Haraprasad employs another expert, Mitra against her. Curiously as the case proceeds, it becomes increasingly difficult to disprove Lata’s identity while shadows of doubt seems to form between Soma and Sudhangshu. As a final measure the distressed and apparently crestfallen Sudhangshu suggests, Kalpana’s brother, Debesh be called in. But before Mitra could ask for the permission of seeking Deben, Bannerjee surprises them by asking the judge to give them a week to call Deben as a witness on the defendant's side. In this situation the audience awaits in true suspense what happens when Deben comes but I assure you something dramatic await them as the movie closes. This outstanding movie seems to be based on the English film, “Chase a Crooked Shadow” but be it a adaptation the excellent acting gives the viewers more than a two hours entertainment.

Bikash Roy (Samaddar), Uttam Kumar (Sudhangshu) both are excellent and so are Kamal Mitra (Suren Bannerjee), Sabitri chattopadhyay (Lata) and Tarun Kumar (Deben) in their shorter roles. Pahari Sanyal (Haraprasad), Sharmila Tagore (Soma) and Utpal Dutta (Mr. Mitra) are also equally well in their characterization.

A Town Called Malgudi

This was my second purchase along with ‘The Last Don’, made on a discount coupon that I’d received from the last book fair and though this was a hurried choice but there is not the remotest chance of repentance on the outcome.
When I’d first read R.K. Narayan, I was fascinated by his style and after reading the first novel in this book, The Man-Eater of Malgudi, i just fell in love with his works. He seemed to be in elements while writing his 9th novel in 1961, 26 years after he entertained his readers with the wonderful ‘Swami and Friends’ His wry sense of humour blended magnificently with the day to day events that he narrated in his own style to weave the plot that at one hand consisted of mystery and on the other hand the constraints in life that an apparently meek and contented man faces that he justifies in his own way. The story starts with the printer Nataraj, a good human being, persuaded by a compelling taxidermist, Vasu, to let his attic for his personal use wihtout caring to pay any rent for that. This doesn’t worry Nataraj but the increasing number of stuffed animals in the attic annoys him and his printing assistant Sastri but both fears the bullying Vasu to order to vacate his residence. Vasu, described as a good marksman and an obsessed taxidermist, often visited the nearby Mempi forest and without a licence, used to shoot animals without paying heed to the forest department and brought back the dead animals for his trade. His obsession ultimately drove him to target Kumar, a temple elephant, which seemed to strike protest from certain people and ultimately on the day following the one he was to shoot the animal, Vasu was found dead in his room. Mystery shrouded as to the cause of the death and a singular and symbolic solution was offered by the author though no clear evidence was ever brought forward.
The second is a novella Talkative Man where we are introduced to Madhu, the talkative man of Malgudi whose incessant talk earned him the name. He, being a freelance journalist, seemed to roam everywhere around Malgudi and each day saw him despatching his reports in the mail van. Thus it was obvious that a new entry in the town of Malgudi would not pass unnoticed by him. In this way he met Dr. Rann, that was what he called himself, in his three piece suit who proclaimed himself to be coming from Timbuctoo and would like to stay at Malgudi to continue his work on ‘futurology’, an United Nations project. Well, everybody seem to buy this, even TM (affectionate abbreviation for Talkative Man in Malgudi) and this resulted in TM writing an article on Dr. Rann which the editors in town seemed to like and published it complete with Rann’s photograph. This resulted in the visit of a lady from Delhi who confided in TM that she was the wife of Rann alias Rangan who was far from being a researcher but a lecherous womanizer. TM took the matter lightly and for the time being shielded Rann from the woman and managed to send the later to Delhi thus helping Rann to evade her. But soon it seemed what the woman had told was true as Rann seemed to form a bondage with the naive granddaughter of the good old librarian of the Lawley Memorial Library and Reading Room. This disturbed TM and he soon set pace to a series of events to save the young woman from disrespect. The story also gathered a brisk pace from this point onwards, so unlike Narayan narratives but as a whole the culmination was again correctly Narayan style. It may be mentioned that Nataraj of the 1st novel also plays a very small role in this narrative that started as a novel but thanks to Narayan who never paid heed to the publisher’s demand of more words and stopped where it needed to be stopped in the signature style!
The book also contains several of author’s short stories where we discover a different Narayan. In Astrologer’s Day the single eventful day of the astrologer revealed not only his secret past but may also represent several of the men in the trade and shows us the extent to which imagination can extend so as to pen such a classic narrative. The next story Lawley Road once again brings the Talkative Man who narrates a humorous series of event following the patriotic zeal of the Municipal Council of eradicating everything that is British in free India. True this story is a must read for every Indians both of whom support or are against of this time to time zeal of the Government without paying any heed to the treasury. In A Night of Cyclone, the Talkative Man narrates an anecdote that though could be horrifying but was draped in humour in his unique style. Selvi is a wonderful tale of a singer turned to star by the scheming Mohan who finally receives a severe jolt from the performer he created. But Nitya disappointed me as it tried to bring back the days of ‘Swami and Friends’ but seemed to lose its goal. But Narayan was again in his elements in The Roman Image in which he again introduces TM and I think I become more and more a fan of the Talkative Man as I meet him each time. Infact as I read the story, I remembered the soap version and how I enjoyed that too. Next is A Horse and Two Goats which is perhaps the best of the collection and here in the course of the events a Tamil rustic man is seen to be conversing in his own language with a British who is turn is speaking in English and both are barely understanding each other in the truest sense. Though the entire narrative is in English, the author’s style has never prevented the reader to understand the comic part which occurs due to the linguistic difference. A Breath of Lucifer seems to be the only short story with a Prologue and this is also an example where a magnificent narrative awaits the reader which is based on a post operative patient and his attendant and I use the word magnificent as the patient was an eye-patient and the narration is from his perspective whose sense of vision is temporarily lost. Narayan is again brilliant in the portraiture of Uncle in the eyes of his adopted nephew and how the latter tries to justify his feelings towards his uncle as his character slowly evolves in front of him. The next is Annamalai where the reader might enjoy again the humour that blends well in the relationship of the master and his servant. The second best of the narrative to me in this collection is Salt and Sawdust where the expert cook and the lover in husband metamorphoses the life of their family in a classic tale of comedy and ambition. The list doesn’t stop here but continues with The Edge, The Mute Companions, Naga and The Seventh House till we reach the final in Under the Banyan Tree which is again a bit abstract to me.
Thus Penguin India presents a fitting tribute to this R.K. Narayan with a nice introduction by S. Krishnan but a slight mistake is present as though the back cover promises the book to contain the short story ‘The Shelter’ but actually the compilation misses it!