Shanku Samagra

The volume, Shanku Samagra, brings together all the Shanku series published over a period of time and is read by all age groups. The hero of the book, Shanku, portrays the character of a Bengali scientist, who is driven by an insatiable appetite for scientific adventures. He undertakes several journeys, including one to Mars. Ray’s hero Shanku is an absent-minded and eccentric genius.Among his imaginary medical inventions is a wonder drug called ‘Miracure-all’ – which can cure any disease, ‘Remembrance’ – for restoring a failing memory, and his most powerful weapon ‘Annihilin’ – which can destroy anything without leaving any evidence. Armed with these ‘weapons’, he can travel to any new strange world or even time zones. His travels have adventure, mystery, and science all with extraordinary stories. He seems to have the uncanny ability to land himself in all types of dangerous situations, from which he comes out eventually. He has faced a killer Tyrannosaurus Rex, met one of man’s distant ancestors, and even travelled trough the dense rain forests of Amazon.Professor Shanku has even travelled across time zones into past and future and other planets, and all stories end with a thrilling climax. Other characters who always join him in his adventures are his own inventions – the robot called Bidhushekhar, his servant Prahlad, and his pet cat Newton. In this volume, readers can find about how they land on Mars, where they are attacked by the natives from whom they escape narrowly. Subsequently, after wandering through space for several days, they discover a planet called Tafa inhabited by what Shanku calls the first civilised human race of the solar system.Satyajit Ray had got inspired to write the series on Shanku by Arthur Conan Doyle’s book Professor Challenger.About Satyajit RaySatyajit Ray was an eminent Bengali film maker, apart from being a renown writer.