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 When he learnt it could not be published as scheduled, he came straight to our house and said, ‘We cannot go on living in this city.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 has been causing us a lot of grief, hasn’t it? I can put up with the physical discomfort, but constant disturbances at work, having to give up reading at night, not even being able to think because of mosquitoes . . . these are very difficult to live with.’ ‘Orissa, I hear, has got excess power,’ Lalmohan Babu observed.

This led to a discussion about Orissa, Puri, the sea beach in Puri and the hotel called Neelachal that had recently opened there, and was owned by Lalmohan Babu’s landlord’s classmate. Unfortunately, it turned out that we couldn’t get reservations before mid-June. ‘Never mind, we’ll go in June,’ said Feluda. Eventually, we left on 21 June by the Puri Express. It was decided that Lalmohan Babu’s driver would take his car and get to Puri by road a day later. We might have gone by car ourselves, but Lalmohan Babu had a sudden attack of nerves at the last minute and said, ‘Suppose there’s a storm or something on the way? Suppose we get stranded?’ But he agreed having our own car was a good idea, since we intended visiting a few other places. Hence the two different travel arrangements. Our journey was uneventful, except for the fourth passenger in our four-berth compartment. He was the only exciting thing that happened. First we saw him fit a cigarette into a holder that seemed to be made of gold. Then he took out a gold-plated lighter (‘At least three thousand rupees,’ Feluda whispered) to light it. His cigarette case was also golden, as were his cuff links, the frames of his glasses and the three rings he wore. While climbing down from the upper berth, one of his feet accidentally brushed against Lalmohan Babu’s shoulder. He gave an embarrassed smile at this and said, ‘Sorry.’ One of his teeth, we all noted, flashed as he opened his mouth. When he got off at Puri with us and disappeared with a coolie and his luggage, Lalmohan Babu sighed. ‘We didn’t even get to know the man’s name. Have you ever seen so much gold on a man, Tapesh?’ he asked. ‘There was a very easy way to find out his name, Lalmohan Babu,’ Feluda replied. ‘Didn’t you see the reservation list at Howrah? That man is called M.L. Hingorani.’