‘But just think, Topshe,’ Feluda had said to me, ‘one day, an Englishman was sitting by the Ganges in a place that was really a jungle, packed with flies, mosquitoes and snakes, and this man thought he’d build a city in the same place. And then, in no time, the jungle was cleared, buildings were built, roads were made, rows of gas lights appeared, horses galloped down those roads, palkis ran, and in a hundred years, the new place came to be known as the city of palaces. What that same city has now been reduced to does not matter. I am talking simply of history. Now, some people want to change the street signs, rename them and wipe out history. But is that right? Or, for that matter, is it possible? All right, admittedly, what the British did was purely for their own convenience. But if they hadn’t, what would your Felu Mitter have done today? Try to picture the scene ... your Feluda, Pradosh Chandra Mitter, private investigator ... bent over a ledger, pushing a pen and working as a clerk in some zamindar’s office, where the term “fingerprint” would simply mean a man’s thumb impression on a document!’

We went to BBD Bagh, which was known as Dalhousie Square at one time, named after the same Lord Dalhousie who was once the Governor-General of India, well known for annexing Indian states and introducing the railways and the telegraph. Job Charnock’s tomb—said to be the first brick structure built in Calcutta—was in the compound of the two- hundred-year-old St John’s Church in BBD Bagh. Lalmohan Babu saw it and said, ‘Thrilling!’ But that might have been partly because of the dark, ominous clouds in the sky and the rumble of thunder. He stared at a marble plaque on the tomb and said, ‘Look, it’s not even “Job”, it says “Jobus”. Why is that?’

‘Jobus is the Latin version of Job,’ Feluda explained, ‘can’t you see whatever’s inscribed on that plaque is in Latin?’

‘No, sir. All I can see is that it’s not English and it makes no sense to me. Why does it say D-O-M above his name?’

‘It stands for Dominus Omnium Magister. It means God is the master of all things. Look at the words beneath. May I draw your attention to one in particular? Marmore. You know the Bengali word marmar, don’t you? That and this “marmore” mean the same thing— marble. What is more interesting is that the word marmar hasn’t come from Sanskrit. It is a Persian word. However, if you say marmar-saudh—meaning a marble column—that’s really funny because “saudh” is a Sanskrit word. So we mix Persian and Sanskrit words quite happily in our own language without even realizing it. Take, for instance—’