Ray Century

You might be thinking what on earth does ‘Milipilping crook’ mean? How would you know? After all, it’s the voice of an alien, named ‘Aang’. Can you guess, who is the creator of this alien? He is the greatest man in the history of the Indian film industry. Every film director touches his feet kowtowing his creativity, from film direction to music production. Apart from this, Ray was such a ‘scientist’ who tried to outspread the so-called scientific mentality to every corner of the then India. His creativity was as a spacecraft lands in a lotus pond in a West Bengal village, amid the night’s “deadly silence”, limp lotus stalks straighten up and open their petals. Maybe most of the Indians know him as a successful filmmaker of all time but how many of them know this protean personality was also, a gem in music direction, creator of Feluda, was a singularity of every type of creativity one can imagine. Ray’s fascination for science fiction began with his father Sukumar Ray’s The Diary Of Prof. Heshoram Hoshiar, which was a parody of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, a tale of some phenomenally absurd and comical creatures thumping around remotes parts of the world.

As science enthusiasts, we are fond of Sci-fi and in this regard, we can’t forget Prof. Shonku. Sadly very few Indians are aware of this remarkable creation of ‘Ray Saheb’. Ray’s knack for science can be found in every piece of his works. His fascination with science led him to launch the science-fiction cine club, “for devotees of science fiction and fantasy films”, in Kolkata in 1966. So now we have created an out scatch of a new Manik Babu, a science enthusiast like us. So, who was Professor Shonku? His creator Satyajit Ray wrote in his very first book on Prof. Shonku, ‘Byomjatrir Diary’ ( The space traveler’s diary), that he got to know about Professor Shonku and his adventures from this diary! The great inventor Prof. Trilokeswar Shonku was from Giridih, now in Jharkhand; he set up his own lab in his house and worked there. The prodigy got his BSc degree in Physics and Chemistry at the age of 16 and at the age of 20, he was appointed as a professor of Physics at the Scottish Church College. This bald-headed, long-bearded scientist lived with his servant Prahlad and his pet cat Newton. The adventures of professor Shanku were certainly breathtaking. But what’s more interesting were his unique inventions. I’m listing some of his genius inventions from Wikipedia:

• Miracurall – A drug that cures any ailment except the common cold, the name is a short form of Miracle Cure for All ailments.
• Annihillin – A pistol capable of annihilating (vanishing or vaporizing) anything that is living, invented because Shonku does not like bloodshed. It does not work on nonliving things (according to Shonku’r Congo Abhijan).
• Omniscope – A combination of a telescope, microscope, and X-ray-scope which looks like and can be worn as a spectacles
• Air-conditioning pill – A capsule to be kept in a shirt pocket, that keeps the body temperature normal in extremes of climate.
• Trishnasok – A thirst quencher pill.
• Batika Indica – A pill made from the sap of the Banyan tree to ward off the need for food and water for 24 hours.

He also had his own robot called Bidhushekhar with remarkable AI. He knew 69 languages and got invitations from international science conferences frequently. We can’t simply imagine the talent of Prof. Shonku and so is the talent of his creator, Satyajit Ray! The more we know about him the more we get surprised. The filmmaker, the screenwriter, the music composer, the painter, the graphic artist, the lyricist, and the author, Satyajit Ray is a man beyond imagination. His works are highly relevant even today. Just imagine, if Professor Shonku were real, he could have saved us from corona with his ‘Miracurall’.

Rabindranath Tagore once wrote a few lines to the very young Satyajit which we have quoted here,(Later Satyajit said that it was a violet notebook that Kabiguru took from him one day. The next day, Kabiguru returned it to him and said to his mother that ‘He will understand the meaning when he will grow up)

“I traveled miles, for many a year,

Spent riches, in lands afar,

I’ve gone to see the mountains,

the oceans I’ve been to view.

But I haven’t seen with these eyes

that two steps from my home lies

On a sheaf of paddy grain, a glistening drop of dew.”

“বহু দিন ধরে বহু ক্রোশ দূরে

বহু ব্যয় করি বহু দেশ ঘুরে

দেখিতে গিয়েছি পর্বতমালা,

দেখিতে গিয়েছি সিন্ধু।

দেখা হয় নাই চক্ষু মেলিয়া

ঘর হতে শুধু দুই পা ফেলিয়া

একটি ধানের শিষের উপরে

একটি শিশিরবিন্দু।”

Written by: Shubhankar Kundu and Soumyanil Adhikary

About The Authors: