TANIYA KOUSAR

ROLL NO. 1423

Q. Describe the significance if the title ‘The Menagerie’ in the Saradindu Bandopadhyay’s
text.
The Menagerie is one of the best collections of suspense thrillers featuring Byomkesh Bakshi
written by Saradindu Bandopadhyay. Bakshi refers himself as “truth-seeker” in the stories
and is known for his proficiency with observation, logical reasoning and forensic sciences
which he uses to solve complicated cases, usually murders. The Menagerie is an example of
such a murder case.
Byomkesh and his assistant Ajitbabu visits a strange private farm, an hour’s train journey
from Calcutta at the behest of its manager Nishanathbabu. They were told that someone is
trying to blackmail him by sending broken motor parts to his farm and a person named Lal
Singh was under suspicion and also were asked to find a woman called Sunayna, a film
actress. The Golap colony is referred to as a “zoo” by the local people. Byomkesh and Ajit
easily understood the reason behind it after they were introduced to the number of odd
characters, the dregs of the society who work for Nishanath babu.

To start with, there is Nishanathbabu’s wife Damayanti Devi. She is beautiful, gentle and
quiet and a whole younger than him. So much younger in fact Byomkesh guesses she is his
second wife. Nishanathbabu’s nephew Bijoy also lives on the farm, and is deeply attached
both his uncle and his kakima. There is Panugopal, who has a speech defect and seems
somewhat simple-minded, but whose heart is in the right place and Rashik De, a sickly
appearance and quite discontented with his present. Suggestion of trouble brewing
between him and Nishanathbabu regarding accounts. Then there’s an array of people with
pasts. Foremost of these is Nepal Gupta, scientist and chemist, half of whose face is burnt
and scarred thanks to a bomb he’d been making that exploded prematurely. Nepal Gupta is
cocksure, rude, critical, too full of himself—and has very definite views on how Golap Colony
should be managed. With him stays his daughter Mukul. Nepal Gupta had been interested in
arranging a match between Mukul and Bijoy, and both parties too seemed keen on that. But
Bijoy appears to have fallen into the clutches of Bonolokhi, whose tale is a sad one of being
seduced and brought to Calcutta before being deserted. Bijoy brought her to the farm a
year and half ago. Next door to Bonolokhi lives the community’s resident doctor,
Bhujanghadhar Das. Not that he’s officially a doctor anymore; though he holds a degree of
Surgeons, he has been de-recognised a few years previously for having carried out an
abortion. Also, with a disreputable past is Brojodas, once Nishanathbabu’s clerk. He had
been caught embezzling office funds and was sentenced to a long spell in jail by
Nishanathbabu. During his stint in jail, Brojodas has found religion and is now a staunch,
God-fearing Vaishnavite. He looks after the community’s cows. Then there is Mushkil Mian,
the driver of the farm and his wife Nazarbibi, silly and an inveterate eavesdropper. The
existence of all these people makes the farm a human zoo and one of these people might in
some way be connected to the motor parts. But who? And who, a few days down the line,
brutally murders Nishanathbabu leaving Byomkesh to solve a case more serious than just
the puzzle of a mysterious woman or the regular appearance of some spare parts.
This is the point where the Gopal colony changes its complexion from being a normal farm
to a menagerie. Strange things start happening in this self-contained little world under the
shroud of darkness. And also, many secrets are revealed as Byomkesh proceeds with the
investigation of the seemingly natural death of Nishanathbabu. After the first interrogation
Byomkesh’s mind is full of confusion and gives a reason why Golap colony is a menagerie.
He says “what else is it? A suspended doctor rattles off slokas in Sanskrit; a professor with
facial disfigurement plays chess with his daughter late into the night; the master is killed in a
house that is locked from the inside but his wife, sleeping in the next room, knows nothing;
the master’s nephew dips into his uncle’s funds and proudly proclaims it; the vaishnav
devotee absconds; the buggy driver’s wife eavesdrops”. He interrogates the people of the
farm two times. He is unsuccessful in finding the truth with the first interrogation but
everyone comes under the suspicion of Nishanathbabu’s death. He again interrogates all of
them for the second time when Panugopal is murdered for trying to help the detectives and
the police. He figures out that all the people in the farm are hiding something or the other
and asks inspector Barat to keep an eye on everyone coming in and out of the farm. On the
other hand, Byomkesh does a bit of a home work and starts searching about Lal Singh and
comes to know that Lal Singh died two year back in the prison. Then first, Damayanti Devi’s
secret is revealed when they catch Brojodas. Brojodas tells them that Damayanti Devi is not
the legally married wife of Nishanathbabu instead she is the wife of the primary suspect Lal
Singh. She also tells them that she has been getting letters from Lal Singh and has been
secretly stealing money and keeping it near the colony gate. Second, Bhujanghadarbabu and
Bonolokhi were married couple. They also find out that Bonolokhi was Sunayna, the actress,
that Bhujanghadarbabu had performed a plastic surgery on Bonolokhi and is the one who
has been sending letters to Damayanti Devi. It is also revealed that Bhujanghadarbabu is the
one who killed both Nishanathbabu and Panugopal.

The Oxford dictionary defines “menagerie” as a strange or diverse collection of people and it
is indeed an appropriate tittle for this novella because of the peculiar inhabitants of Golap
Colony who seem capable of doing just about anything to safeguard the secrets of their
tainted past. Each of them is ill-placed, for one reason or the other, to earn a livelihood in a
conventional method. Not even Nishanathbabu was a person with straight past. He also lied
about his marriage with Damayanti Devi and God knows what was there between him and
Sunayna. Nepal babu, Bijoy and Mukul knew the secret of Nishanathbabu and Damayanti
Devi but did not tell anything to the detectives and the police. Both the masterminds
Bonolokhi and Bhujanghadarbabu commits suicide after doing all the sinful things and dies.
Over all the story was very interesting, the way the author unfolds the mystery, keeping all
the inhabitants of Golap Colony under suspicion till the last few pages of the story.