Ajit Bandyopadhyay (character) - Parallelism With Dr. Watson

Parallelism With Dr. Watson

His character is often compared to that of Dr. Watson. Both had been portrayed by their authors as faithful sidekicks to the main character. Both are intended to study the case from a layman's point of view. Each is assigned at least one case to try to solve of their own- Watson in The Hound of The Baskervilles and Ajit in Makorshar Rosh. Both meet the respective detectives in the course of a mystery. However Watson lives a married life in contrast to Ajit. While Watson is certainly not averse to adventures, and even shows a penchant for it, Ajit, a traditional Bengalee clad most of the times in Dhuti and Punjabi, is not exactly enamored with such ideas; in Sheemonto Heera even after Sir Digindranarayan Roy had granted them permission to search his mansion for the diamond, he refuses to go there again, stating that the gatekeeper Ujre Singh would surely stab him even though he surely had been instructed to let them in; he is even afraid to go out in disguise for an evening stroll (which, Byomkesh deems as necessary, and later as the story unfolds, it turns out that he was right) in Pother Kanta, fearing that the police might arrest him should they see through his guise. Closely associated with Holmes and his escapades as he is, Watson still maintains a healthy practice as a doctor. Ajit's literary works however do not do much to help him financially, which leaves him and Byomkesh in financial crisis when Byomkesh has not got a case in hand to procure some income. This is starkly portrayed in Adim Ripu, where their penury reaches such an acute state that they are unable to have even decent meals. However the author offers no explanation as to why his novels fail to gain popularity or critical acclaim. It might be that they may not be that rich in literary content, or it may also be that his novels, for all their goodness, did not tune to the zeitgeist, for those were the times of intense political unrest and furor, and few people would have had time or scope to fully appreciate literature. Saradindu admitted in a letter to his friend that in order to relieve him of his monetary problems, he had planned to let Ajit buy a second hand a car in his novel Bishupal Bodh (ultimately left unfinished due to the author's death), and earn some money by letting it on rent with him being the driver, and in the process, let Satyabati (who had long cherished a car) go to the market and other places in the same. However he soon gave up on the idea, for he found the idea of a novelist becoming a cab driver to earn money as kind of cheap.