Jatayu (Lal Mohan Ganguly)

Lalmohan Ganguly, alias Jatayu (Bengali: জটায়ু), (also spelled Jotayu) is a character in the Feluda stories written by Satyajit Ray. He writes crime thrillers, but is quite weak and nervous in real life. He is fairly wealthy due to the immense sales of his books; he writes two books a year. His crime fiction stories have very interesting names, often characterised by alliterations like `Sahara-ey Shiharan', `Vancouver-er Vampire', `Honduras-e Hahakar', `Atlantic-er Atanka' etc. It may be noted that the names of several Feluda stories also exhibit this feature, for example 'Gangtoke Gondogol', 'Joto Kando Kathmandute', 'Royal Bengal Rahasya', 'Robertson-er Ruby', 'Gosaipur Sargaram', etc. The detective of Jatayu's novel, Prakhar Rudra, is a character with incredible intellect and power. Lalmohan's grandfather gave his name "Swarbogya Gongopadhyay" but Lalmohan does not use that name.

He first meets Feluda in the story Sonar Kella (The Golden Fortress) and from then on he accompanies Feluda and Topshe on all their major adventures. He collects weapons but is often reluctant to use them. Weapons collected by him during different adventures include boomerang, kukri (knife), smoke bomb etc. His whole demeanour is of hilarity and he regularly provides the comic relief in the stories. He has a history with the villain Maganlal Meghraj who had a circus performer throw knives at him in Joi Baba Felunath (The Mystery of the Elephant God) and fed him the drug LSD in Jato Kando Kathmandutey (The Criminals of Kathmandu).The last time Jatayu met Meghraj was at Golapi Mukto Rahashya

In the Feluda adventures he is a great source of comic relief. However, his qualities improve with time and with his association with Feluda, gradually makes him more knowledgeable and intelligent. In the movie version (not in the original story) of the first story, Sonar Kella, the criminal Mandar Bose escapes due to the folly of Jatayu. But in the later stories we find Jatayu being of great help to Feluda in his work.

Jatayu is a fan of Baikuntha Mallick, a teacher in Athenium Institution, Kolkata, who is also a poet. Jatayu often recites his poems, which are also a source of comedy due to their peculiarity. Jatayu walks two miles daily to keep fit, refers to encyclopaedia for writing novels. He is a bachelor and owns three houses. He loves travelling.

In the first two movies on Feluda, the character of Jatayu was played by eminent actor Santosh Dutta, and due to his performance, Satyajit's Rays later stories on Feluda had Jatayu adapting himself to the looks and mannerisms of Santosh Dutta. Bombaiyer Bombete & Kailashey Kelenkari saw Jatayu being played by Bivu Bhattacharya.