Cover

PUFFIN BOOKS

THE ADVENTURES OF FELUDA
THE SECRET OF THE CEMETERY

Satyajit Ray (1921-1992) was one of the greatest filmmakers of his time, renowned for films like Father 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.

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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.

By the Same Author

Read the other Adventures of Feluda in Puffin

The Emperor’s Ring

Trouble in Gangtok

The Golden Fortress

The Incident on the Kalka Mail

The Royal Bengal Mystery

The Mystery of the Elephant God

The Bandits of Bombay

The House of Death

The Curse of the Goddess

A Killer in Kailash

The Criminals of Kathmandu

Chapter 1

Three days after Pulak Ghoshal’s film completed twenty-five weeks in the Paradise cinema in Calcutta, a second-hand Mark 2 Ambassador drove up to our front door, blowing its horn and making a terrible racket. It was no ordinary horn. What it played, very loudly, was an entire set of musical notes.

Pulak Ghoshal was a film director in Bombay, and his film running at the Paradise was based on a story written by Lalmohan Babu. We knew Lalmohan Babu was thinking of buying a car to mark the occasion, but did not realize that it would happen so soon. Actually, he had done more than buy a car. He had also appointed a driver as he could not drive himself. He had no wish to learn to drive, either. In fact, he made that comment repeatedly, so much so that one day, Feluda was obliged to ask him, ‘Why not?’ Lalmohan Babu had then offered an explanation. Apparently, five years ago, he had started taking lessons, using a friend’s car. After only two days, he had got into the car with a wonderful plot in his head. But, as he was switching to the second gear from the first, the car had given such an awful jerk that the plot for a new novel had flown straight out of his head, never to return.

‘I still regret its loss, I tell you!’ Lalmohan Babu sighed.