Ghonada - Life of Ghanada

Life of Ghanada

Most of the short stories and novel featuring Ghanada take place at the all-male mess on No. 72, Banamali Naskar Lane in Kolkata, West Bengal where the four young members of the mess Shibu, Shishir, Gour and Sudhir (the narrator) try to trick or please the middle-aged Ghanada in a variety of ingenious ways to force out his stock of unique stories that range from science-fiction, action/adventure to historical conspiracies. In most of his stories, Ghanada himself is the wonderfully wise and wily hero who travels all-round the globe to tackle sinister bad-guys and international conspiracies. Apart from these four, there are two minor recurring characters, Rambhuj the cook and Banowari the all-purpose butler of the mess; also sometimes, a few temporary members has come, such as: Bapi Datta, Sushil Chaki and Dhanu Choudhury . Likewise Feluda and Tenida, female characters are generally missing in these stories.

But besides the stories taking place in No. 72 Banamali Naskar Lane, Ghanada also features in a number of novels and stories set in regular evening meetings of elderly gentlemen on the side of the Kolkata Lake. In these Ghanada is referred to as GhanashyamBabu (the suffix Babu in Bengali is similar in usage to the honorific "Mr." in English). The four listeners are: HarisadhanBabu,ShibapadaBabu, RamsharanBabu and BhabataranBabu. The author's style and approach loses the casual sense and gains a more polished, serious and sarcastically formal aura. In these episodes Ghanada never takes on the mantle of a hero himself (as he does in No. 72 Banamali naskar lane), but instead he fashions his narratives on any one of his illustrious, swash-buckling ancestors. Ghanada's ancestors are shown (except one story) to have influenced highly important historical events like the fall of the Inca Empire or Shivaji's remarkable escape from Agra in Medieval India. Unlike the mess-time stories, these stories feature heroines and mature scenes while the latters do not. The Lake-side episodes of Ghanada were targeted at an adult reader-base and all these tales are included in Ghanada Samagra 3.