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All the way from his home at 221 B, Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes has come to Bihar. Indian writer Partha Basu, in his debut fiction work, The Curious Case of 221 B, has set up a mystery in Deogarh, Bihar, which would be unraveled by none other than the legendary detective Sherlock Holmes.
Basu describes his work as “real and a slightly different thing” on Holmes, Dr John H Watson and the other famous characters created by Arthur Conan Doyle.
“I have been fascinated by this sense of things not being what they are made out to be – this ‘other side’ of things. When the man under scanner is Sherlock Holmes, the plot thickens. So, staying with the fiction, I felt it would be a challenge to create this ‘other side,” Basu said.
“What if some of Holmes’ celebrated successes did not happen the way we have been told? What if the characters were not what we knew them to be? I found the idea grist for a writer’s mill,” he added.
Basu’s Holmes is a rather “supercilious” and “moody” character. “Most of the work on Holmes either carries his story forward or backwards or fills in the missing years with fresh exploits,” Basu said.
“Jamyang Norbu, a Tibetan writer, did it so well in ‘The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes’ by placing the detective in Tibet for two years after the detective’s death under the Reichenbach Falls,” Basu said.
He said that he set his novel in India as “Deogarh sounded more intriguing than 221 B or Dr Watson’s Chambers in Queen Anne Street in London.”
“I want to see translations of Sherlock Holmes in regional languages and more children to know about him like Harry Potter,” Basu said.
