Ray fiction

When Ray made two consecutive contributions of short stories in English to the Amrita Bazar Patrika, little did he know what the future held for him. “I had no literary bent at all, and never thought I might one day write stories,” he said. “A poet friend of mine and I hit upon the idea of reviving Sandesh", the Ray family magazine for children. As an editor, Ray felt that the onus for the contribution was on him. The first edition of Sandesh contained a translated version of Edward Lear's The Jumblies, while the second issue had his first short story Banku Babur Bandhu accompanied by his own illustrations. From 1961 to 1992, spanning almost three decades of his iconic presence, Ray wrote over 75 stories, in addition to 35 pieces of detective fiction featuring Feluda and another 40 tales of the eccentric scientist Professor Shonku. Ray’s stories have been widely translated into all the major Indian languages and several international languages, and this inevitably bears testimony to the widespread popularity of Ray fiction. When in school, and later as an young adult, Ray voraciously read the works of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle which showed that he had a particular liking for science and crime fiction, the fantastic and the supernatural. Later, as an author, Ray wrote mostly on these themes, which indicated the influence that these writers had had on him. “I enjoy writing stories for its own sake and derive a pleasure from it which is quite distinct from the pleasure of the vastly more intricate business of making a film,” wrote Ray. “I have written stories both during the making of a film and in the free period, usually lasting about six months, between films."