Book Review: On the Run with Fotikchand by Satyajit Ray

“...And who is this young assistant you have got here?”

The question came so unexpectedly that Fotik’s heart nearly jumped into his mouth.

The two men were standing nearby. They had just emerged out of the dark. On Fotik’s right stood Shyamlal, his bow legs covered by long trousers. Out of the corner of his eye, Fotik saw the blade of a knife flash, go past his ear and stop somewhere between him and Harun.

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On the Run with Fotikchand by Satyajit Ray, the celebrated filmmaker, writer and cultural icon, is a charming adventure story about an 11-year-old boy who loses his family and his memory.

The story begins when Bablu, the son of a wealthy Calcutta barrister, is kidnapped by four criminals. Their plan takes a disastrously wrong when the stolen car carrying the boy crashes, killing two of the kidnappers. Bablu survives the accident but awakens with no memory of who he is or where he belongs.

Adopting the name Fotikchand, he drifts through the streets of Calcutta (now Kolkata) until he meets Harun, a poor but warm-hearted juggler who offers him food, shelter and work. As Fotik settles into his new life, helping at a tea stall by day and assisting Harun at local fairs by night, he becomes fascinated by the world of juggling and street performance.

His newfound happiness is short-lived, however. The two surviving kidnappers discover that the boy is alive and begin searching for him, still hoping to collect a ransom. As danger closes in, Fotik and Harun are forced to flee, setting the stage for an exciting climax in which the boy's lost memory begins to return. Meanwhile, back home, his influential father presses the police to intensify their search and places newspaper advertisements offering a reward of Rs.5,000 for information leading to his son's return.

On the Run with Fotikchand is not so much a tale of kidnapping as an endearing story of friendship between Fotik and Harun. The juggler’s hand-to-mouth existence does not come in the way of his kinship with, and generosity towards, the boy, the son of a rather selfish and calculated man. A not-so-subtle contrast between the arrogance of the privileged and the humility of those living on society's margins.

The 94-page novella is mildly suspenseful and moves at a brisk pace. The narrative is simple and engaging, thanks to Gopa Majumdar's translation from the original Bengali. Majumdar has translated several works by Satyajit Ray and other Bengali writers into English.

The book was adapted into the 1983 film Phatik Chand, which I have not seen. My Puffin Books edition (pictured above) also contains black-and-white illustrations by Ray himself.