Professor Shonku

Character outline

The real name of Professor Shonku is Trilokeshwar Shonku. He lives in Giridih beside the river Usri. He has a male-servant named Prahllad and a cat named Newton living in the house. In his story "The Astronaut's Diary" (Byomjatrir diary) Ray introduced Professor Shonku, the protagonist of his science-fiction stories.

Professor Shonku's father Tripureshwar was a physician. Professor Shonku was born on June 16. His nickname is Tilu. Professor Shonku passed matriculation examination of the University of Calcutta at the age of 15. At the age of 16, Professor Shonku received his BSc degree with honours in two subjects, Physics and Chemistry. In Satyajit Ray's last finished novel of the series, Swarnaparnee, that was initially published in the Special Puja issue of Anandamela children's magazine in 1992, it was mentioned that at the age of 20, Professor Shonku took his first job as a professor of physics in Calcutta's Scottish Church College.

Professor Shonku is a polyglot who knows 69 languages. His pet cat 'Newton' is 24 years old.

Inspiration

By his own admission, Satyajit Ray had based Prof. Shonku on Professor Challenger, by Arthur Conan Doyle. and a character created by Ray's father Sukumar Ray named Hesoram Hushiar. The other important character in Satyajit Ray's novels and short stories is the sleuth Feluda, who is of the same profession as Conan Doyle's famous private detective, Sherlock Holmes and Tarinicharan Banerjee (or Tarainikhuro) the story teller.

Other frequent characters

Inventions of Professor Shonku

He has his own laboratory there in his house in Giridi where he researches for loads of new and fantastic inventions.

His extraordinary inventions are:

The adventures

Professor Shonku had many adventures, in both real and fantastical places, some with historical leanings and some with great revelations connected to human civilisation.

Excerpts of some interesting adventures follow:

A child who otherwise used to be normal, has "changed" after he fell and hurt his head. Once happy and normal, this child has become melancholy and speaks things which the parents do not follow and term as gibberish. The parents desperately seek help to get their boy back. A doctor finally suggests to see Shonku. Although initially Shonku was reluctant to see this boy as practicing medicines is not his profession — after he sees the boy it soon becomes obvious that this is indeed an extraordinary case worthy of his attention. What appeared as gibberish to his parents were actually meaningful facts which should normally be well beyond his or many other peoples reach, spoken in many different languages which the child had no way to learn. He also demonstrates psychic ability, where the flash of a camera stops working after he declares he does not want to be pictured but the reporter insists. Although the child seems to be omniscient, he appears sad and detached from the material world. The story ends when the child concocts a potion by mixing several very dangerous chemicals and acids, some of which were Shonku's own inventions, and gulps it down before Shonku had a chance to stop him. A short period of unconsciousness follows, after which the child wakes up as his normal old self. He then makes friends with Shonku, states he has no memory of things which happened in the last few days, and even asks for chocolates.

Professor Shonku meets a fakir who has this ability to re-animate a living thing from its bones. Shonku tries to investigate, which enrages the fakir and the causes him to curse Shonku. Later in his life, Shonku discovers the remains of a dinosaur in a cave along with an assistant. The curse starts to take effect and the dinosaur comes back to life.

Shonku gets hold of a mysterious sphere which changes its color spontaneously and emanates various sounds. In fact, the sphere is a planet from another solar system and it has brought extraterrestrial life along.

The Professor is haunted by a repeating dream where he along, with his friends, are stranded on a beautiful exotic island without any inhabitants. His friends also experience the same dream. It is as if the mysterious island is beckoning great scientists of the world to it.

Shonku goes to Tibet, to find out about a Unicorn which is reported to be seen there. In the adventure, Shonku discovers a place where everybody's dreams come true... a Utopia.

Shonku tries to prove that human civilization has prospered thanks to the help of some alien civilisation that comes to Earth every 5000 years and teaches them something extraordinary. What are they going to reveal this time?

Nokurbabu has the ability to make others see what he is thinking. He and Shonku are caught in a chain of events that lead them to the deep jungles of South America where El Dorado has always eluded discovery.

Several sightings of UFOs makes headlines worldwide. However, this news is outdone by the news of the demolition of some of the greatest monuments of mankind. The Eiffel Tower and the Angkor Wat are destroyed, and the aliens are blamed. Nokurbabu joins Shonku and other scientists who discover that the UFO has its base in the Gobi desert. They find the UFO and go aboard. They are captured immediately, not by the aliens, but by a mad scientist who is the present owner of the UFO and who is in fact the destroyer of the monuments, driven because he was denied his due honour in the scientific community. His next target is the Taj Mahal.

This is the story of a young Shonku when he visited Germany on the eve of World War II. A fascinating story about how Shonku went on to meet Hermann Göring and finally evaded the Nazis.

Professor Shonku books

Comics

Some of Professor Shonku stories has been made into comics and published by Ananda Publishers.

Radio

In the Sunday Suspense Series of 98.3 Radio Mirchi several Professor Shonku stories has been performed by RJs, like- Mir.

Film

Sandip Ray announced a Big budget Professor Shonku Film will be made soon.