The Curious Case of 221 B

The quizmaster’s question to you is, “Which fictional character lived at 221 B, Baker Street?” The answer is Sherlock Holmes. You know that. Of course you do. Created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the first public appearance of Holmes was in 1887. Sherlock Holmes birthday is generally deduced to be January 6, 1854. Holmes lived with his good friend and chronicler Watson, before his (Watson’s) marriage in 1887, and again after his wife’s death. Traditionally, the canon of Sherlock Holmes consists of the fifty-six short stories and four novels written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In this context, the term “canon” is an attempt to distinguish between Doyle’s original works and subsequent works by other authors using the same characters.

Expect to see the movie version of Sherlock Holmes directed by Guy Ritchie (Director of the film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and a few other films). Expected to release by the end of this year, the movie has Robert Downey Jr as Sherlock Holmes and Jude Law as Dr Watson. Rachel McAdams plays Irene Adler as the solitary love interest of Holmes who was a bit of a misogynist.

Partha Basu, best known as the writer of the column Quiz Mountain for the Illustrated Weekly has written a what-if book based on Holmes (clearly someone who the author has a not-so-high opinion of) that makes Watson, the chronicler get a lot more of the limelight. This book (The Curious Case of 221 B – published by HarperCollins) takes a complicated narrative style – three view points and takes some of the well known cases of Holmes and either carries his story forward or backwards or fills in the missing years with fresh exploits starting with Jit, the protagonist who discovers a wooden box in remote Deogarh in Bihar (why Deogarh may I ask?) soon after his parents are gunned down by assailants in the summer of 1970. The box contains “a thin bundle of letters and two linen bound notebooks.” The diaries contain Dr Watson’s versions of the “true stories” behind eight whodunits.

Like several good quizzers, Basu is clearly a trivia buff. He ran a travel business for a few years. That stint took him to see everything from opium dens of London to the slave dungeons of Zanzibar – stuff that showed up in this book. He was one of those who almost won the BBC quiz program Mastermind that was televised a couple of years back. I asked him a few questions myself to find out what kind of a man rewrites Sherlock Holmes mysteries (in two months, according to the author) and puts a twist to it!

Abhijit: Tell us about your previous books.

Partha Basu: My first book was born out of a quiz weekly column I did for the Illustrated Weekly of India, for about two years. Which meant lots of questions! I finally bowed to pressure from my readers to compile the best ones into a book and Quiz Mountain was born. In 1992. A couple of years later I published a longish monograph, if you can call that a book, for the Poona Film & Television Institute on Ritwik Ghatak. Six years later, my friend and I did The Calcutta Persona, a different sort of book on the city. It sold very well. I never seriously thought of writing fiction; nor consciously chased a writer’s dream.

Abhijit: (I saw him refusing oatmeal and honey cookies. “I am allergic to honey”, he explains) Is your allergy to honey reflective of the fact that you hate deification?

Partha Basu: First, the allergy. I’m told it’s a ten thousand to one chance. I’ve received emergency treatment in sick rooms in Singapore and Dubai and once in the city of York in England because I ate things which had honey in them, without knowing it. Apparently it’s the enzymes; most people get it from bee stings.

The deification ? I dislike our habit of deifying people at the drop of not a hat, but a pin. But I’m not allergic to Sherlock Holmes. He shall remain immortal, in spite of all that is and will be written about him. That’s how it’s been for almost a hundred years.

Abhijit: I am not familiar with every story of Sherlock Holmes. Can you help us understand what the Canons are?

Partha Basu: According to the OED, a canon, has many meanings. Including a collection of the authentic works of a particular author or artist. In this case the Long and Short stories concerning Sherlock Holmes. When you add one more “n” to the word, it becomes a weapon. Conan Doyle created other heroes too, like Brigadier Gerard and so on. He was very prolific. It’s interesting that at one point, Conan Doyle got so bored with Holmes that he killed him at the Reichenbach Falls. But intense public pressure forced him to resurrect Holmes. The next time, he made Holmes fade quietly away to a little farm in Sussex.

Abhijit: How do you think the readers will view Sherlock Holmes once they read your book.

Partha Basu: The response, so far has not been negative at all, from both readers and reviewers. There could be some Holmesian outrage bubbling around the short horizon, what with over 2000 Sherlock Holmes Societies, world-wide. Though I’ve passed the famed London Society’s litmus test, comfortably. Newcomers to Holmes will probably say, ‘How can you presume that we know the canon and its twists and turns as well as maybe you and some others do?” I had to put in synopses and Emma Hudson’s explanatory mid-words, for this reason. I was worried that it would break the flow but both have clicked.

Abhijit: You have been in the travel trade. How have those experiences showed up in your stories?

Partha Basu: I’ve been to almost every place my book talks about and I made sure that the feel and historicity was authentic. From the opium dens of London, past the wild beauty of the Cape of Good Hope to the slave dungeons and markets of Zanzibar. All of it. Actually, I should have written a superior Travel book, like Bruce Chatwin wrote, but I was too busy traveling.

Abhijit: What is the next piece of fiction you are working on?

Partha Basu: I’m trying to complete, on a Harper Collins contract, a novel I had started much before 211B. It’s called Silicon Valley Wives; I have a love hate relationship with the Valley.
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INVITATION: Partha Basu is launching the book at Cafe Mocha in Gurgaon on 19th September 2009 at 5:00pm. I will be reading out excerpts and talking to the author. So come over if you are in town.

Read more articles by Abhijit Bhaduri at http://abhijitbhaduri.com