Art on a transformer in Mudiali depicts Satyajit Ray, who used to live in the area
“We are a 91-year-old Durga Puja, but we have always stuck to tradition. “We moved to our Cooper Lane home near Maddox Square in 1974.
Feluda is an emotion for Bengalis,” said a resident. The pandal has always resembled the thakurdalan of an old Bengali household and the immersion is always completed on Dashami,” said Ranajit Chakraborty (Rana), one of the secretaries of Ballygunge Durga Puja Samity which organises the Maddox Square puja. There is no restriction on entry to the park and people love this openness and spend hours sitting on the grass,” said Chakraborty, a resident of the area for over six decades. Even then it was a popular yet traditional puja,” Bose said.
Even in the age of theme pujas, Maddox Square has stuck to tradition in its pandal and idol, yet has remained immensely popular among both old and young. Mudiali is the para where Feluda lived. It is also where his creator Satyajit Ray lived for many years, and where the actor who brought Feluda to life on screen, Soumitra Chatterjee , lived. ‘Rajani Sen Road’ strikes a chord with most Bengalis. In Feluda stories, Rajani Sen Road is established as the private detective’s address. “I still see so many people walking down the road trying to locate Feluda’s home. One of the last surviving single theatres of Kolkata, Menoka Cinema, is located near Mudiali and is still running full-house shows. The neighbourhood was also home to actor Rabi Ghosh, composer Raichand Boral and film director Debaki Kumar Bose. Singer Hemanta Mukhopadhyay lived in a building right across Menoka Cinema. Our idol is still an ‘ekchala thakur’. “Maddox Square is one of the most popular meeting places during Durga Puja. Historian Sugata Bose, son of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s nephew Sisir Bose and parliamentarian Krishna Bose, still remembers the popularity of Maddox Square. “During that time, it was a residential para. Nowadays, a lot of commercial enterprises have opened,” he added.
Ray lived at 3, Lake Temple Road. But the good thing is that he is not changing the exterior of the building,” said Partho Ghosh, a 76-year-old resident who has lived here all his life. Because there were always people walking around, “I have heard that Chatterjee found it impossible to come out of his home on Southern Avenue.
Ghosh said that once Ray moved to Bishop Lefroy Road, Chatterjee moved into where Ray lived. He was looking for a quieter place, for his privacy,” said Ghosh. Some call it the Feluda circuit. Lake Temple Road, a short walk from Rajani Sen Road, is where Ray and Chatterjee lived. “The previous owner of the property sold it and the new owner is repurposing the property.