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Homing in on holmes: A baker st irregular

Shobha Sengupta

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation, Sherlock Holmes, has been an icon with a life of his own, viewed independently of his creator. The most brilliant sleuth in literary history, Sherlock Holmes has a huge following all over the world. In Bengal, he is widely worshipped. And yet, in the fitting irony of things, it has been up to a man from that province to — albeit in a fictional state — present an "expose" of this great detective. Partha Basu, in his The Curious Case of 221B, is blasphemously and deliciously audacious. It is an attempt both admirable and heroic, and for it the writer deserves only praise, no brickbats.

In The Curious Case of 221B, subtitled The Secret Notebooks of John H. Watson, MD, Partha Basu has skilfully interwoven three threads narrated by three main characters. There is "Jit’s Story": Jit is a man of our times, who happens to unearth some notebooks sent many years ago by Dr Watson (Sherlock Holmes’ Boswell, as we all know) to Jit’s parents. In "Dr Watson’s Narrative", the truth is revealed about some of the most famous cases. The true happenings were hidden from public view by the loyal Dr Watson in order to protect the great man’s reputation. Dr Watson’s resentment at Sherlock Holmes’ arrogance is as natural as his unquestioned loyalty: "Not one of your cases, Watson — mental, not physical. All right; come if you want to." A highly plausible reason for the revelations! The third thread is aptly named "A Mid-word from Emma" — Emma being one of Dr Watson’s wives (the good doctor was apparently a lady killer, and we have Sherlock Holmes’ words to the effect in the original version).

Partha Basu moves from one era to another with an agility that is astonishing, without disrupting the smooth flow of the book. The modern touch of Jit’s friend "Muddy" Madhavan: "It’s The Sign of Four, and not The Sign of the Four, you moron" — is beautifully juxtaposed with the stiff language of Victorian times, "O Tempora! O Mores!", and "We must award full marks to JHW for probity; after all, who was to question what he was reporting in the canon?"

The deftness with which the writer convincingly gives different perspectives and angles, without striking a jarring note, is testimony to his being on par with the finest writers. Partha Basu hits the bull’s eye each time. His use of language is spot on, his research impeccable, and his revelations often seem more probable than the original. With a perfect puzzle maker’s mind, he turns eight cases out of the existing 56 on their head and spins them around till you feel happily dizzy. A Scandal in Bohemia, The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax are now Blunder in Bohemia, The Reappearance of Frances Carfax and so on. As the writer says: "In The Curious Case of 221B, the original elements are undisturbed. Everything seems as it was, but new facts come to light and new stories develop, which happen to be quite different from what we had read. And things change."

There have been some earlier adaptations, take-offs, and parodies. Some authors have supplied stories to fit the tantalising references to unpublished cases (e.g. "The giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not prepared" in The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire), notably The Exploits of Sherlock Homes by Conan Doyle’s son, Adrian, with John Dickson Carr. But Partha Basu’s take-offs must be read.

For it is obvious that the writer has spent a huge amount of time on research, and done some intensive, scientific verification of facts. In A Serpentine Affair, Partha Basu’s refers to Calcutta: "Kipling’s ‘packed and pestilential town where Death looked down’"; it was also "the finest place in the world to Miss Emily Eden, sister of the Governor-General, in 1836...." The figure of Sir John Woodroffe, author of the famous Serpent Power, explaining the Hindu concept of the kundalini shakti, adds value, enriches the narrative, and places the book squarely in the Indian historical landscape.

It is known that Arthur Conan Doyle had got Dr Watson to publicly acknowledge in the course of narration a bit of confusion in terms of some names and events, adroitly shifting the blame onto the good doctor’s narration within his book. There have been critics who have wondered. Partha Basu has used this to superb advantage and done a brilliant job in his "exposes". He has got under the skin of his characters. The nuances are perfectly and consistently authentic and the atmosphere just so. Turning the Holmesian canon on its head, the writer adds to it, bringing back characters from the past — "except that they are no longer what we had made them out to be".

The writer is the owner of Quill and Canvas, a bookstore-cum-art gallery in Gurgaon