Indian Detective characters

Indian Detectives

It is amazing when you think about the fact that the entire genre of detective fiction that exists today started with a single person – Arthur Conan Doyle. He was not the first  detective character by any means –  Edgar Allan Poe created a character called C.Auguste.Dupin, which is supposed to be first modern detective...the concept of the impossible murderer in ‘Murder in the Rue morgue’ and the idea that the best place to hide an object is in plain sight as in ‘The purloined letter’ both came from this character.

Another early detective was ‘M.Lecoq’ created by the French author Emile Gaboriau, who used to spend his time in various disguises. And there were some other minor characters – Charles Dickens created a detective ‘Inspector Bucket’ in Bleak house, and Wilkie Collins wrote about a mystery situation in ‘The woman in white’. (Those of you old enough can remember a Doordarshan ripoff called Shwetambari or something which was based on this novel)

But this is all mere quibbling. All these characters are long forgotten except by mystery junkies. The quintessential detective of all time was none other than the great character created by the good doctor – Sherlock Holmes. Doyle cracked the funda of how to create a great character who knows the truth and  yet maintain story tension for the reader, by having a dim-witted companion as the story teller, who knows as little as the reader and is as lost as he is  – and hence he created the other great character of Dr Watson.

Holmes is so well known that there is no need to talk anything about him. (If you don’t know about Holmes, then I wonder why you are reading this!). Not only is the enduring image of a private detective, but he had an undying influence in all future detective characters. They were all either copies of Holmes, or consciously trying to be as different from him as possible.

Not too many of the copies are remembered today, but two of the anti-Holmes are the most beloved characters in detective fiction. First is the ex Belgian policeman with the egg shaped head and long moustaches – M. Hercule Poirot. Agatha Christie created Poirot as the anti thesis of the testerosone filled super hero Sherlock- clones. He was a small dapper man, a  foreigner, no disguises, no physical strength, no clue finding and no stud-giri. In fact she created a Holmes clone called M.Giraud and made him a figure of fun.  After that, she went even further and created an even more unlikely detective, going as far as possible down the anti-Holmes path – a little old lady living in a small village who ‘disapproved of murder’ – Miss Jane Marple. Here she managed to break the mold of the dumb narrator as well, and made it a normal 3^rd person novel – which was again a remarkable feat.

The American school of detective fiction did not go quite so far – they continued with the testerosone blast, but only added some cynicism and unshavenness, and replaced Sherlock’s cocaine addiction with a  simpler bourbon whisky addiction. Writers like Dashiell Hammett, Philip Marlowe and Erle Stanley Gardner produced ‘hardboiled’ private dicks like Sam Spade who were eagerly lapped up by Hollywood with amazing actors like Humphrey Bogart creating a visual icon of the tough detective.

Since then there have been detective stories of every nationality and timezone – from Cadfael the monk in 14 century England to Elijah Baley investigating robot murders in the far away future. There are fat African woman detectives in Botswana (Precious Ramotswe of the No.1 Ladies detective agency) and Red Indian Navajo detectives and what not.


In India, strangely, we have never really gone in for the detective genre much. The only 2 major characters are both bong created – Feluda and Byomkesh Bakshi. Satyajit Ray created Feluda (Prodosh Mitter)  as more or less a Sherlock Holmes clone – same tall thin strong guy who is good at everything – from Kung fu to Shooting to medieval history and has a dumb narrator in shape of his cousin Tapesh. It is still great fun to read, though the stories are a bit thin and dated.

Similarly Byomkesh Bakshi is another Holmes and Feluda  clone created by Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay, complete with a dumb narrator in the shape of Ajit Bandyopadhyay. I have actually never read this dude, and know about him only because of the serial on Doordarshan, which was really cool.

Apart from these two characters, who are pretty old in the tooth – Byomkesh was written in the 1930s and Feluda in the 60s; there are no Indian detective characters that I can think of. HRF Keating wrote a series of books about Inspector Ghote (one was made into a film with Naseeruddin Shah) but they didn’t exactly set the world on fire.

Even in films and TV there were not too many detective stories. By the far the most famous is ‘Karamchand’(so cool), then the popular but crap quality ‘CID’( which is strictly speaking, a police procedural and not a detective fiction). There were a few films like ‘Do Jasoos’, ‘Gopichand Jasoos’ etc which were more a spoof than a detective story. There were a number of mystery stories but without a central detective character.

Modern writers have tried their hand at it – Miss Marple clones in Smita Jain's “Piggies on the Railway” and Kalpana Swaminathan's “Monochrome Madonna” and a few others.  But frankly, they all suck.

I wonder why, actually. Detective stories are fun for all – fun to write, fun to read – they are basically an intellectual adventure with some spills and thrills – a crossword with gore, so to speak. 

So I also decided to try my hand at it.

The first challenge was the character – what would be a good name and character? Just when I was thinking of this, a mail from a headhunter popped into my inbox. It was an old Bajaj alumni who signed himself as ‘Dipy’ singh.  Just then, my boss came to introduce one serd to me, who had just joined as the head of sales....

‘Meet Mr mumblety mumble Singh’ He said.

 ‘Eh?’

The serd grinned toothily and said ‘Oh, you can call me Dipy’

Two Dipys in 2 minutes – has to be a sign. Dipy it is. So I called my detective Dipy singh. It is not possible for a detective character to be a bearded and pug serd, so I converted him into a cut serd, and balding too, just because I felt like it.

I made him into a tandoori chicken and cold beer fan, because I am one, and it was fun to write about people eating tandoori and drinking cold beer. Yum yum, I am salivating just thinking about it.  Also, it sounds like a very serd thing to do. A teetotaller veggie serd would be a really sad and depressing thing. Now if you eat and drink like this, you will be a bit plump and dumpy – but not too much.

Next you need a dumb narrator – and who could be dumber than me? So I made myself the second character –  a fat slob writer who is Dipys drinking partner.

I was very clear that I don’t want to investigate some normal murder and suspense stuff – it should be something weird and supernatural, but can be investigated logically by a detective.

I had just been to a blood bank for some reason, and it struck me that this would be an ideal place for a vampire – ready-made blood. But how would an Indian vampire be different from a phoren one? And how would a detective catch him? All this thinking went into the first Dipy story, which you can read here, if interested.

http://www.ketanjoshi.net/Fiction05.html

But after that, I thought that Vampires are too much of a western idea – not indian  enough. So I tried to think of specifically indian situations and mystery ideas that could be from there. I wrote a story about Tantric curses, one about a godman, etc.  As I wrote, I tried to make it Indian as far as possible, and unlike a normal detective story. The character and story frequently twisted in my hands, and ended up on paper quite different from what I had jotted down in my starting notes. Oh well, Thats the real fun of writing – when a story creates itself and dances on to the page.

I put together a few stories and made it into a book, which I put on the Kindle store - which can be accessed through a Kindle, any tablet, smartphone and even on the PC.  

http://www.amazon.com/Dipy-Singh-Private-detective-ebook/dp/B005WB244M

What will happen to that is a real mystery, but by gum, it was fun to write.