[Reader-list] Tiktiki & Kiriti Roy & Feluda

[Naeem Mohaiemen]

> From: debjani sengupta <debjanisgupta at yahoo.com>
> The Tiktiki: or ruminations on the lonesome detective
>The word Tiktiki, in common Bengali parlance is a lizard, a
soubriquet given to detectives

The first sentence I ever read in Bangla was "tiktiki piche legeche
bodhoy" (I think the lizard is after me), in the opening page of a
mustry Kiriti Roy novel.  I recall being handed the entire KR
collection by my father and being told "eta thomar oitijjo" (this is
your tradition).  But beyond the amusement at the tiktiki term, I
found the books rough going at that tender age.  Dense, circuitous,
humorless, and written in ye olde Bangla.  Korecchen, Kheyecchen, good
grief who talked like this (in Bangladesh at least, where we had
corrupted it to korsi, khaisi)?

Satyajit Ray's Feluda series came along to rescue those of us who
found KR too stiff.  I think I never read the word tiktiki in Ray, but
maybe it was there.  The most memorable line from Ray was "Simla jawa
foshke gelo, foshke gelo!" (The chance to go Simla slipped away,
slipped away).  I had to ask my mother what Simla was.  She looked at
me, partition's bastard child, and said "oi pare, oi khane, mane
bharat'e" (over there, across the border in India).  She herself was
born in Assam.  Post partition, she visited India once in the last
four decades.

Simla jawa foshke gelo, foshke gelo...