Kiran Manral

Character study

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The whole idea of a historical detective began for me when I received an abridged Sherlock Holmes book as a prize in school. The book opened up everything I had thought about the UK, about the Dickensian era and the grasslands of England. When I read Holmes in the beginning, I remember feeling like I was solving the mystery along with this man. But re-reading it later, I started dwelling more on the character and details like the descriptions of the large castles. More than the stories, it's the characters like Professor Moriarty that I remember. Also, another association I have with the series is through my dog. My peers and seniors would [laughingly] call it The Hound of the Baskervilles, when it was actually this little Pomeranian.

Anita Nair

Holmes, the adapter

I read The Hounds of the Baskervilles when I was in school and it had this old-school way of story-telling that I wasn't familiar with. But for me, the resurrection of the character came in the form of the shows [on BBC starring Benedict Cumberbatch]. It's not that Holmes was fading away. But people got to see a modern adaption of the first fictitious detective figure that most of us ever knew. I have seen the films with Robert Downey Jr, too, and the fact that one character can spawn such high-profile adaptations shows how important he is. There are also many literary derivatives, of which Satyajit Ray's Feluda is the most successful.

Bilal Siddiqui

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