Cover

SATYAJIT RAY

The Adventures of Feluda

The Incident on the Kalka Mail

Translated from the Bengali by Gopa Majumdar

PUFFIN BOOKS

PUFFIN BOOKS

THE ADVENTURES OF FELUDA
THE INCIDENT ON THE KALKA MAIL

Satyajit Ray (1921-1992) was one of the greatest filmmakers of his time, renowned for films like Pather Panchali, Charulata, Aranyer Din Ratri and Ghare Baire. He was awarded the Oscar for Lifetime Achievement by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science in 1992, and in the same year, was also honoured with the Bharat Ratna.

Ray was also a writer of repute, and his short stories, novellas, poems and articles, written in Bengali, have been immensely popular ever since they first began to appear in the children’s magazine Sandesh in 1961. Among his most famous creations are the master sleuth Feluda and the scientist Professor Shonku.

Gopa Majumdar has translated several works from Bengali to English, the most notable of these being Ashapurna Debi’s Subarnalata and Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s Aparajito, for which she won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2001. She has translated several volumes of Satyajit Ray’s short stories and all of the Feluda stories for Penguin Books India. She is currently translating Ray’s Professor Shonku stories, which are forthcoming in Puffin.

Read the other Adventures of Feluda in Puffin

The Emperor’s Ring

Trouble in Gangtok

The Golden Fortress

The Royal Bengal Mystery

The Mystery of the Elephant God

The Bandits of Bombay

The House of Death

The Curse of the Goddess

The Secret of the Cemetery

A Killer in Kailash

The Criminals of Kathmandu

Chapter 1

I had only just finished reading a hair-raising account of an expedition by Captain Scott. Who knew I would have to travel to the land of mist and snow so soon after this? Well no, I don’t mean the North or the South Pole. I don’t think Feluda would ever be required to help solve mysteries in such remote corners. The place I am talking about is in our own country. Here I saw snowflakes floating down from the sky like cotton fluff. It spread on the ground like a carpet, dazzling my eyes as the sun fell on it; yet it stayed soft enough to be scooped and gathered into a ball.