Tintin enjoys cult status in India, especially Bengal, where he features on the reading list of every self-respecting family. Many a Bengali boy has had the daknaam (pet name) 'Tintin' and innumerable pet dogs have been named 'Snowy'.
Whilst Tintin has never been to Kolkata in any of his adventures (although a certain Captain Haddock is known to have visited The City of Joy), Tintin’s popularity in Bengal shows no signs of waning.
BTW, I am not sure how much this is true, but apparently the Maharaja’s place in Cigars of the Pharoh was inspired by the Parasnath Temple in Kolkata. So in a small way, Kolkata May have featured in Tintin stories!
In the 1970s, Bengali was the first Indian language in which Hergé’s works reached the subcontinent. I believe the magazine owner Aveek Sarkar had himself travelled to Brussels in the 1970s to meet Hergé, and successfully received the rights to translate Tintin into Bengali. The translator of the adventure series into Bengali was none other than the poet Nirendranath Chakravarty. Serialised in the popular children’s fortnightly magazine Anandamela (see covers above), Tintin and his dog Kuttush soon became a household name. The Bengali Tintin was an instant hit.
By 2004, Anandamela had finished translating and serialising the 23 comic books. In the mid-1980s a local publisher began printing the comic books. Since then it has reportedly sold around 500,000 copies of each adventure! “Bengali Tintins are a part of every Bengali child's growing up. Our books are everywhere, in all book stores in Bengal,” said the chief of Ananda Publishers.
In an interview, Hergé once said, “I receive . . . a lot of mail from India. Here, in the office, are two letters from Calcutta. Now, what can there be in common between a boy in Calcutta and myself?” One such boy was Anindya Basu, an architect by profession, who in 1979 sent a card drawn with Tintin characters to Hergé, saying how much he loved the books. He got a signed Tintin cartoon in 1980 as a reply.
Second-hand book stores in College Street and Gol Park also see brisk sales - that’s where I got my collection. “People still read, discuss and continue to hoard trivia about Tintin’s adventures,” says Indrani Ganguly, of the Calcutta Bibliophiles book club. “I set one of the hardest quizzes last year to test people’s love for the comics. Questions about even the minute details and hardest tidbits from all the 23 books were answered. The participants were as young as six, and as old as 60,” she says.
Tintin’s Bengal connection remains as strong as ever and is flourishing through “fan art”
In letters written to fans in the city, Herge had expressed his desire to visit Calcutta and set one of Tintin's adventures there. The city, he said, fascinated him with its comic possibilities. These possibilities are being realised by our homegrown artists.
“For children growing up in the 1980s, a time before the internet, Tintin was a window to the world,” says Mahafuj Ali, 33-year-old landscape architect and self-taught cartoonist. Last year, Ali reimagined Tintin in Bengali clothes, cutting a cake in the backdrop of the iconic Howrah Bridge, an illustration which went viral last year and was even shared by the Embassy of Belgium, New Delhi. This year, Ali took them on a tour to picturesque Darjeeling on a toy train!
“Growing up in Nidaya, a tiny village in Nadia, and reading Tintin by the light of a kerosene lamp, was like travelling the world. I landed on the moon with him, dived into deep seas and climbed to Tibet. The comics gave me more knowledge than my textbooks,” says Ali.
He is not the only homegrown artist to reimagine Tintin in Kolkata. Rhiddhiraj Palit, a 22-year-old graphic designer by profession, grew up reading the Tintin comics translated by poet Nirendranath Chakraborty for Anandamela. “I once read that Hergé wanted to visit Kolkata when he knew about his fan following here. He thought of creating a ‘Tintin in Kolkata’ series, but that never happened. So I wondered what it would be like if Tintin, Snowy and Captain Haddock really arrived here.”
In 2016, he sketched the Belgian reporter roaming in Shyambazar. His ‘Tintin in India’ series in 2017 coasted on the internet’s popularity, too. The panels he made last year add more anecdotes. “There is Satyajit Ray on a billboard, Kuttush as a fish-lover and a bangla mowd (country liquor) bottle in the hands of Captain Haddock!” he says.
This trend is catching on and Tintin's love affair with Kolkata is thriving through the efforts and skill of many others as well. Here are some images collected from various social media platforms:
Tintin sightseeing in Kolkata
Feluda
Read my detailed post on Feluda x Tintin
Professor Shonku
Personally I think they should juxtapose him with Prof. Calculus
Tintin’s love affair continues
If you still had any doubts over Kolkata’s cred as Tintin City of India, sample these:
In 2014, a political party used Tintin to canvas for votes as a part of their poll campaign.
An octogenarian Calcuttan runs an eatery called Tintin Economic Chinese Restaurant, which serves a Tintin chow mein and fried rice.
The more hard nosed can head to the Tintin and the Brussels Club, a restaurant that specialises in Belgian cuisine and is inspired by the intrepid reporter. “In 2016, we visited Belgium for the first time and visited the Hergé Museum in Louvain-la-Neuve. As Tintin fans, we were mesmerised. When we decided to open a restaurant in March last year, it had to be centred on Tintin,” says Barnali Sen Sarma Ghosh.
The restaurant has rooms dedicated to Professor Calculus, Tintin and Captain Haddock, a library stacked with Tintin comics in both English and Bengali, as well as puzzles, posters and figurines collected from the Tintin museum in Belgium. It is also the home for a newly formed Calcutta Tintin Fan Club, where around 30 members plan to meet every couple of months to celebrate their hero. “When I see young children, I try to introduce them to this magical world, maybe not with a book from our library but a Tintin puzzle,” Ghosh says.
In 2018, a Tintin installation was inaugurated on the fourth anniversary of Mother’s Wax Museum and it is located not inside but outside the centre. This museum is Kolkata’s answer to Madame Tussauds.
If you still have a doubt about how popular Tintin continues to be in Kolkata, check out the wedding invitation of this couple:
Post script: Tintin is not the only cartoon character to be reimagined in Kolkata, so have Asterix and Obelix.
Sources:
https://www.indianexpress.com/article/express-sunday-eye/yo-ho-ho-and-a-bottle-bangla-5546016/lite/
https:///www.bbc.com/news/15680397.amp