Professor Shonku By Satyajit Ray
Professor Shonku By Satyajit Ray - In this post you will get all the information about
‘Professor Shonku’. The proper and easy explanation of the novel is written
below, i hope will read the summary and know everything about 'Professor Shonku'.
Professor Shonku is a collection of nine science fiction short stories by Satyajit Ray featuring the fictional scientist-inventor Professor Shonku. The collection was first published in 1965 by Calcutta publisher NewScript Publications.
Professor Shonku By Satyajit Ray - The original collection contained seven stories,
while the eight and ninth stories were added in later editions. Eight of the
nine stories were published in the children's magazine Sandesh, while the ninth, "Professor Shonku o
Bhoot", was previously published in Ashcharya. The short
stories are written in epistolary form, using dated diary entries as a framing device.
Introduction
Professor Shonku By Satyajit Ray - The first of Professor Shonku's diaries is
discovered by Tarak Chatterjee, an amateur (and rather poor) writer, who has a
fascination for tiger stories. On hearing that a large meteor had crashed into the Matharia areas of the Sundarbans, he visited the location in search of tiger skin.
Failing to find them, he looked around only to find a red notebook inside the
meteor's hole (later learned to be the first of Professor Shonku's diaries).
This he hands to the editor of Sandesh, who publishes the diary's entries
as the first story, "Byomjatrir
Diary".
Professor Shonku By Satyajit Ray - The diary is eaten by fire ants, but the editor visits Professor Shonku's laboratory in Giridih,
India, and locates 21 other diaries, which he publishes periodically as stories
in his magazine. After the first few stories, the editor stops appearing, and
the stories begin with the journal entries themselves, narrated by Shonku directly.
Characters
- Avinash Chandra
Majumdar (referred to as Avinash Babu)
- Nakur Chandra Biswas
- Jeremy Saunders
- Wilhelm Crole
- John Summerville
- Prahllad
- Newton (Cat)
Summary
Professor Shonku By Satyajit Ray - The first of Professor Shonku's diaries is
discovered by Tarak Chatterjee, an amateur (and rather poor) writer, who has a
fascination for tiger stories. On hearing that a large meteor had crashed into the Matharia areas of the Sundarbans, he
visited the location in search of tiger skin. Failing to find them, he looked
around only to find a red notebook inside the meteor's hole (later learned to
be the first of Professor Shonku's diaries). This he hands to the editor
of Sandesh, who publishes the diary's entries as the first story,
"Byomjatrir Diary".
Professor Shonku By Satyajit Ray - The diary is eaten by fire ants, but the editor visits Professor Shonku's laboratory in Giridih,
India, and locates 21 other diaries, which he publishes periodically as stories
in his magazine. After the first few stories, the editor stops appearing, and
the stories begin with the journal entries themselves, narrated by Shonku directly.
Byomjatrir Diary
Professor Shonku By Satyajit Ray - A poor author approaches the editor
of Sandesh with a journal by Professor Shonku, a scientist who
disappeared fifteen years ago. The editor learns from the diary that Shonku,
despite being mocked by his neighbour Abinash Chandra Majumdar, was getting prepared
for a voyage to Mars. He also invented a robot that he called Bidhushekhar. Later, Shonku, his servant Prahlad, his pet cat
Newton, and Bidhushekhar arrive on Mars and are attacked by an army of Martians. They flee from Mars, lose their way in space, and after
many days of wandering, finally arrive in Tafa, an unknown planet inhabited by
the "first civilized humans of the solar system". Unlike the
Martians, the inhabitants of Tafa welcome the strangers and make Shonku their
fellow citizen. The editor plans to publish the journal in his magazine, only
to discover later that the diary has been destroyed by a swarm of ants.
Professor Shonku o Harh
Professor Shonku By Satyajit Ray - Upon the Abinash's insistence, Professor Shonku
visits a sadhu in Giridih, who is always seen hanging upside down
from a tree, and is known to have the ability to bring dead animals back to
life through the power of his spells. When skeletons of dead animals are
brought to him, he brings them back to life. Being a scientist and an inventor,
Professor Shonku was sure there was hypnotism involved but is stunned to see that the animals are
being revived.
Shonku secretly records the spell that
the sadhu was chanting and. When
he tries to play the chant at his laboratory, he only hears ghastly laughter.
Shonku, after seeing the sadhu angrily glaring at him, realizes that the
sadhu somehow learned about his plan. The sadhu disappears from
Giridih the next day.
Professor Shonku By Satyajit Ray - That incident gives Shonku an interest in bones,
and after seeing what he suspected were the bones of a brontosaur in a neighbour's house, he visits the forests of
the Nilgiris, where his neighbour had found the
bones. He finds the bones of the brontosaur in a remote cave. After retrieving
and studying the bones, one night Shonku sees the sadhu chanting the
same spell as he used to in Giridih. The brontosaur is revived and starts
munching on the tree where the sadhu was hanging. The sadhu tries to
chant a reverse spell to change it back to its skeleton form, but just as he
completes the spell, he is crushed to death underneath the bones of the
dinosaur.
Professor Shonku o Macaw
Professor Shonku By Satyajit Ray - Shonku describes his experience with Professor Gajanan Tarafdar,
who is an unscrupulous scientist that loves to profit off of other scientists'
work.
While Shonku was busy
with creating an invisibility potion, Tarafdar interrogates Shonku. When Shonku
gets distracted by a piece of mail, Tarafdar starts reading Shonku's notebook
that contains his experiments and formulae. Shonku arrives, catches Tarafdar and gets rid of him
from his house. Tarafdar visits his house, but Shonku keeps him away from his
laboratory to prevent him from reading his notes.
·
Tarafdar writes a
letter to Shonku, challenging him by saying that he will make an invisibility
potion before him.
·
One morning, after
returning from a morning walk, Shonku discovers a macaw sitting on the branch
of his garden's tree and keeps it.
While experimenting
with his invisibility potion one day, Shonku attempts to test the potion on a guinea pig when, to his utter shock, the macaw starts speaking to him in
clear Bengali and
asks what he is doing. Shonku briefly explains his work to the macaw and when
the bird asks about the potion in his hand, Shonku explains what it is and even
reveals the formula of the potion. The macaw turns silent when Shonku asks how
it learnt Bengali.
Later one night,
while returning to his bedroom after having dinner, Shonku hears the macaw
murmuring the invisibility potion's formula to itself. Both of them say good
night to each other and leave.
One day later, the
macaw vanishes from Shonku's house. While entering in his laboratory, Shonku
discovers the laboratory window open and the macaw gone. Albeit sad at the
macaw's departure, he becomes suspicious about the open window as he clearly
remembers that he closed it. In order to get over the sadness, Shonku focuses
on his work.
Professor Shonku By Satyajit Ray - The next month, after Shonku has finished his
experiment, an incident happens in his house. After returning from his
prolonged morning walk, he sees the main door open and the lock broken and
Newton afraid. Hearing sounds coming from his laboratory, Shonku rushes inside and sees
that his laboratory has been ransacked in his absence and a bundle of
his notebooks flying in the air on their own and going towards the open window.
Shonku pounces upon his notebooks and a struggle ensues between him and an
invisible person. Shonku succeeds in overpowering the intruder and retrieving
his notes, but they try to escape. Another invisible creature arrives and
attacks the escaping invisible intruder. Shonku recognizes both of them:
Tarafdar and the macaw. Tarafdar manages to escape.
The macaw reveals the
entire truth to Shonku: the macaw was part of a Brazilian circus. Tarafdar went to Brazil a few years ago and stole the macaw from there. The
macaw, who was already intelligent and proficient in several languages, started
living with Tarafdar and learnt Bengali language from him. Tarafdar sent the macaw
to infiltrate Shonku's household and collect the invisibility potion's formula.
Thinking that the macaw can betray him in the future, and also to suppress his
secrets which the macaw knows, Tarafdar tried to kill the bird.
Professor Shonku o Egyptio Aatonko
Professor Shonku By Satyajit Ray - A person tells Shonku to stop his work on mummies,
after which Shonku takes a mummy from his friend and returns it to Giridih.
Professor Shonku o Golok Rahasya
Abinash leaves his
house one morning for a morning walk and finds a small ball lying next to a
dead snake. Intrigued, he takes the ball.
Professor Shonku By Satyajit Ray - Shonku invents a microsonograph, a machine capable
of hearing and recording inaudible sounds of all kinds. He experiments with it
by recording the sound of a rose crying loudly, after tearing a leaf of the flower.
Abinash visits Shonku and shows the ball to him.
One evening, when
Shonku is recording the sound of grass, Abinashbabu bursts in and claims that the ball has
changed colour several times in one day. He also claims that he stayed awake
till late at night to see the shift in color. Shonku dismisses his claims as
a hallucination due to sleep
deprivation, angering him.
Professor Shonku By Satyajit Ray - Later, Shonku visits Abinashbabu and finds him
writing an article for a newspaper regarding the ball. Shonku asks to stay in
his house to study the ball's colour changes and Abinash accepts. Shonku
witnesses the ball changing colour and agrees that the ball has some kind of
magic.
Later, Abinashu discovers some dead insects lying near the ball; scared, he
gives it to Shonku.
Shonku studies the
ball carefully, but cannot reach any conclusions. He is even more puzzled when Newton
turns violent and attempts to destroy the ball. While lying in bed trying to
fall asleep, he realizes what the colour-changing actually is: the ball's
colour changes resemble the changing of the seasons on Earth. Different colours
on the ball represent the different seasons. The only difference is that the
ball takes one day for a season change.
Later that night, Shonku wakes up and hears a thin,
shrill and low voice calling him by his name.
Shonku and Newton go downstairs and enter the laboratory. The sound is coming
from the ball and is being recorded by his microsonograph that he left on.
Professor Shonku By Satyajit Ray - Shonku hears an alien voice coming from the ball.
It claims that they are the inhabitants of the ball and that their planet,
named Terratom, is the smallest exoplanet known in the universe. Terratom deflected from its
orbit and crashed into Earth. The aliens soon reveal themselves to be highly
lethal and extremely dangerous viruses, explaining the presence of the dead
snake and the dead insects. The virus-like aliens also claim that they can
infect and kill the entire population of Earth within three days. They ask
Shonku to release them, as they are suffocating due to lack of air, as Shonku
kept the ball inside a small glass chamber. Shonku remains adamant; he stays in
his position and does not remove the glass chamber. The virus-like alien
population soon suffocates to death.
Professor Shonku o Chi Ching
Professor Shonku By Satyajit Ray - A
Chinese magician fails to hypnotize Shonku. After some years, the
magician comes to Shonku's house. When the magician leaves the house, Shonku
sees a lizard eating his dangerous acids and transforms into a Chinese dragon.
Shonku fires his invention, the electric pistol, to slay the dragon, but it
does not work. He then loses his senses, and when he regains them, he
understands the magician Chi-Ching had hypnotized him.
Professor Shonku o Khoka
Professor Shonku By Satyajit Ray - While playing in his house's courtyard, a boy named
Khoka slips, falls and injures his own head, after which he undergoes a drastic
change and starts speaking gibberish. After several doctors fail to reach a
conclusion regarding his condition, Khoka's father meets with Shonku, asking
for his help. Though initially uninterested, Shonku reluctantly agrees to see
Khoka. During his first meeting with Khoka, the boy nonchalantly reveals the
power of Shonku's spectacles, utterly shocking him.
After studying Khoka for some time, Shonku
learns that the gibberish uttered by Khoka are actually scientifically
intricate formulae and information which Khoka has no possible way of learning,
and starts displaying psychic abilities.
After Khoka garners
local attention, journalists and reporters start flocking around Shonku's house
to have an interview with the boy. With his psychic skills, Khoka causes a
reporter's camera to malfunction, and starts speaking in foreign languages to
evade the journalist's questions. Shonku quickly brings the event to an end
when Khoka grows tired.
Professor Shonku By Satyajit Ray - One night, Shonku wakes up from his sleep and
discovers Khoka gone from his bed. He soon him working in the laboratory with chemicals. Shonku
attempts to stop Khoka, but Khoka threatens to injure him if he tries to
interrupt. After a long and stressful moment, Khoka finally concocts a potion
using some of Shonku's dangerous chemicals and consumes it, after which he
loses consciousness.
Khoka inexplicably
reverts to normal in the morning. Shonku escorts him back home, and Khoka's
parents are quite delighted to see their son become normal again.
Professor Shonku o Bhoot
Shonku invents headwear
called the neo-spectroscope, which allows him to meet with the ghosts of
deceased people. He experiments it by communicating with the ghost of his dead
friend, Professor Archibald Ackroyd.
Professor Shonku By Satyajit Ray - People, including Abinash, start to see Shonku
roaming around Giridih. When they call him, he ignores them and leaves. This
news shocks Shonku, as he never left the house during those times. Prahlad
claims to have seen Shonku late one night in the laboratory when the real
Shonku was sleeping in his bedroom. Shonku becomes worried and starts to think
that he is doing all these things unconsciously without remembering anything.
Later one night, Shonku sees himself sitting in his garden's deck chair.
Professor Shonku By Satyajit Ray - The man whom everyone presumed to be Shonku is
actually the ghost of Shonku's great-great-grandfather, Botukeshwar Shonku, who wanted to meet with
the professor and bless him for his work. After the blessing, Botukeshwar
vanishes, never to be seen again.
Later, Abinash meets
with Shonku and shows him a photo taken by Abinash's nephew. He claims that
Shonku was in the photo but Shonku's image had vanished from the photo. Shonku
tells him the truth.
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