Yo Ho Ho, and a Bottle of Bangla: Kolkata is truly Tintin City

The Tintin sketch by Hergé, which Basu had received in a reply to his letter in 1980.

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.

“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.

For this year’s adventure Mahafuj Ali took Tintin and Captain Haddock on a toy-train ride to Darjeeling.

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.

Tintin in Kolkata reimagined by Graphic Designer and fan Rhiddhiraj Palit in north Kolkata’s Shyam Bazar.

But if you had any doubts over Kolkata’s cred as Tintin City, 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.

Interiors of the Tintin and the Brussels Club in south Kolkata’s Gariahat area. (Express Photo: Shashi 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.

A little fan with a Bengali translation book of ‘Tintin in Congo’ at Ananda Publisher’s College Street store. (Express Photo: Shashi Ghosh)

The comics are still a bestseller for Ananda Publishers, who have the Bengali rights; second-hand book stores in College Street also see brisk sales. “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.

This article appeared in print as ‘Yo Ho Ho, and a Bottle of Bangla: Hergé’s characters live on in Kolkata’.