There was something special about Feluda’s palm. The line called ‘headline’ that’s supposed to indicate one’s intelligence, was exceptionally long and clear. Feluda did not believe in palmistry, but had read up on the subject. Lalmohan Babu, who believed in it wholeheartedly, had once asked Feluda to show him his palm. Feluda had obliged with a grin, but Lalmohan Babu had failed to share his amusement. He had inspected the headline, then said, ‘Amazing, amazing!’ After this, he had opened his own palm, looked at it and sighed deeply. I had had to try very hard not to laugh. One of my uncles could read palms. I had heard him make reasonably accurate statements about one’s past and make predictions for the future that often turned out to be true. Some people, I was told, could look at a person’s face and tell him about his future, But I didn’t know it was possible to place one’s little finger in the middle of a person’s forehead and reveal what the future had in store for him. I saw this being done only when we visited Puri. Incessant power shedding and a temperature of 110°F had driven us out of Calcutta. The power crisis had got so bad that Lalmohan Babu’s latest novel could not be printed in April. He was most annoyed at this, particularly as it was his first crime thriller with a touch of the supernatural. As a matter of fact, it was Feluda who had given him the idea. ‘Ghosts and spooks go very well with flickering candlelight.’ Lalmohan Babu had taken this seriously and written Frankenstein in Frankfurt. When he learnt it could not be published as scheduled, he came straight to our house and said, ‘We cannot go on living in this city. Besides, you’ve heard of the skylab, haven’t you?’ There was really no reason to assume the skylab would come crashing down on Calcutta, but Lalmohan Babu kept saying that a large portion of it might, since the entire city of Calcutta appeared to have caught the ‘evil eye’. Feluda is normally extremely adaptable. I have seen him remain perfectly unperturbed even under the most trying circumstances. If he had to spend a whole night at a railway station and the waiting room happened to be full, he’d quite happily stretch out on the platform. But there was one thing he couldn’t do without: reading in bed for a few hours before going to sleep. Weeks and weeks of power cuts had deprived him of this one luxury he allowed himself to indulge in. This had made him rather cross. He had tried practising card tricks, written limericks, and tried many other things to amuse himself. Long periods of darkness, I had hoped, would result in more crime. But sadly, no interesting cases had come his way. He was, in short, utterly bored. This was perhaps the reason why he appeared to agree with Lalmohan Babu and said, ‘Really, the City of Joy