| Professor Shonku, Scientist-Inventor |
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A rare frontispiece retrieved from an old Autumn number of ‘Sandesh’. Ray drew this in 1964 for his story, ‘Professor Shonku and Macaw’.
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By his own admission, Satyajit Ray modelled the character of Professor Shonku, the scientist-inventor who makes trips to far corners of the globe and gets involved in unintended adventures, on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger. Ray described him as “a mild-mannered version of Professor Challenger”. |
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Though Shonku looks bland when compared with the English professor's violent temper, his gentle manners, coupled with his rare genius for invention, have made him one of the most endearing characters of Bengali fiction.
That he is no less loved by Western readers is proved by the popularity of the Shonku adventures available in translation. |
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Chinese Magician Chee-Ching, trying in vein to hypnotize Professor Shonku. ( Professor Shonku and Chee-ching )
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Shonku made his debut appearance in Byomjatrir Diary , a long story Ray wrote for Sandesh magazine in 1965. He wrote a total of 38 Shonku stories --- of which the last one, Intelectron , was left unfinished --- where the Bengali inventor lands in dangerous situations in places nearly all over the world, and snaps out of them mostly by virtue of his extraordinary intelligence and sometimes with the help of the faultless weapon Annihilin he himself has made for use in self defence. |
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Ray often used colour illustrations for his Shonku-stories written after 1973. ( Mystery of the Munroe Island )
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The world scientist community rates Shonku as only next to Thomas Alva Edison as an inventor. Notable of the numerous inventions Shonku has made are Batika Indica, a pill that takes away man's hunger, Miracurol , another pill that cures all diseases except common cold in a matter of 24 hours, Ornithon , a machine for improving the intelligence of birds, Omniscope , a pair of glasses that serve the combined purpose of a telescope, a microscope and an x-ray machine, Air-Conditioning Pill that keeps man warm in winter and cool in summer, Neo-Spectroscope , an equipment for seeing ghosts, Linguagraph that records and translates into Bengali sounds made in all languages by men and |
animals, and Annihilin , a three-inch pistol that never misses its target --- to name only a few. Professor Shonku has obtained patents on over a thousand of his inventions.
Shonku, who is a quintessentially Bengali bhadrolok in his lifestyle and convictions, lives with a loyal servant and a pet cat in the small Indian town of Giridih on the river Usri. He was a brilliant student who never |
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Shonku secretly searching for a clue in a laboratory of an old castle in Norway.
( Hypnogen )
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came second in school and college. He began teaching at a well-known college in Kolkata (previously Calcutta) at age 20, but later devoted himself entirely to scientific research at his well-equipped laboratory in Giridih. A man of regular habits, Shonku starts his day with a walk along the river bank. A vegetarian, Shonku is teetotal as well. Though he has visited many cold countries, he has never drunk alcohol except in Brazil where he once sipped champagne against his better judgment. |
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Shonku’s pet ‘Newton’ jumps towards the extraordinary sphere that changes colour all through the day and night. ( Professor Shonku and The Extraordinary Sphere ) |
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Not unlike
the Feluda stories, the Shonku adventures are great
entertainers, but if one looks beyond their face value,
one is sure to discover things more serious than mere
entertainment. Shonku stands for some deeper values ---
like sympathy for the disadvantaged, indifference to
wealth and strong opposition to what he believes to be
wrong --- that are fast disappearing from the modern
world. |
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Did Ray want to make any
statements through the Shonku stories? That is the
question raised by some Shonku-watchers. “Has the maker
of Shonku identified himself with Shonku at times? Who
is the man so deeply concerned over the growing
expensiveness of medical treatment making it
inaccessible to the poor?” asks Saroj Bandyopadhyay, a
noted literary critic. |
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Shonku lands on the strange island of giant flowers with glowing colours. He has been dreaming about the flowers every night. ( The Dream Island )
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He, however, figures out an answer to his own question: “Shonku's philosophy of the universe, his anti-fascism, his concern for the common man, his capacity to challenge humbug, are all manifestations of the larger humanism of Satyajit Ray himself.”
The answer Bandyopadhyay comes up with is probably not far too wrong.
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Contributed by AKD
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