There has always been an unsaid competition in Bengali literature between Byomkesh Bakshi and Pradash Chandra Mitra, fondly known as Feluda. It began in the year 1932 when Saradindu Bandyopadhyay thought of this lazy, Bangali, detective, who is also a family man. In 1965, detective Feluda was born in a magazine named Sandesh under the editorial ship of Satyajit Ray. This detective was not a married man and by Ray's own confession Feluda was more of an inspiration from the British character Sherlock Holmes.
Both these men found fame in the later stage of their life when they found life on screen, but let us focus mainly on Byomkesh Bakshi for now. It was in 1993 when Byomkesh Bakshi got national fame when Doordarshan started making a series.
"I think my name was suggested by Mr Soojit Sen, who was one of the writers of the series called Yugantaar. and also Subhankar Ghosh who had directed Yugantaar. They both suggested my name to Basu Chatterjee.that's how I went to meet him. I just went to meet him, chatted with him. He told me that he wants me to play Byomkesh Bakshi and he asked me to come. That' when he gave me all the episodes, I was given all 33 episodes to read at a short span of time. Which is rare because in today's time people don't give you all the episodes to read when you are playing a character. But he had got these translated and all 33 episodes were ready with complete dialogues," Rajit Kapur had earlier said in an interview with International Business Times.
"Now we create a bank, after that lots of interference from various creative departments who probably has no idea about creativity at all. So you have big production houses, then you have channels, where everybody wants to be the director. So, as a result, there are no directors. Because they don't have any direction. Because there are too many people trying to create the same thing. It's not one person's vision and if there are so many people it will get hotchpotch and khichdi only," he added while talking about the present situation in the film industry.
Here are some of the actors, who managed to bring Byomkesh Bakshi to life.
Rajit Kapur
Rajit Kapur played Byomkesh Bakshi when times were simpler in the film industry and technology had not reached its zenith. Basu Chatterjee's DD series were more concentrated on the series than the cast.
Uttam Kumar
Satyajit Ray's Byomkesh based series earned Uttam Kumar the National Film Award for Best Actor and Satyajit Ray for Best Direction. Kumar's magnetic stardom acted like the cherry on top for the strongly constructed script.
Abir Chatterjee
The Byomkesh series turned Abir Chatterjee into a star. Chatterjee managed to bring in a new kind of life to the lazy detective, a family man who often quarrels with his wife but simultaneously seeks her opinion while attempting to solve a mystery.
Jisshu Sengupta
Actor Jisshu Sengupta was a star even before he began his acting venture as Byomkesh Bakshi. Without any kinds of discrimination, we were able to love Jisshu as much as Abir in the character of detective Bakshi. Jisshu, carries a calm composure in his face. He has the look of a listener, someone who is willing to listen to the entire matter, do some private investigation and not immediately form a conclusion to get an answer.
Anirban Bhattacharya
Out of the various projects which made Anirban Bhattacharya a star, Hoichoi series Byomkesh is one of them. The actor managed to bring in a lot of Byomkesh's 'Bangaliyana' (Bengali-ness) in the web-series.
