Dakshin Ray

the classic Bengali satirical tale “Dakshin Ray” by Rajshekhar Basu, better known by his pen name Parashuram. The work presents the story through a series of premium, minimalist, 16:9 comic-style panels in English and Hindi, combining early twentieth-century Indian literary humour with elegant sepia-toned visual narration. The adaptation follows the comic rise and fall of Bakulal Dutta, a clerk-turned-wealthy aspirant whose greed, political ambition and misplaced devotion lead him into the strange world of Baba Dakshin Ray, the legendary tiger-deity of the Sundarbans. Through drawing-room adda, colonial bureaucracy, political vanity, folk belief, supernatural satire and absurd transformation, the story becomes a sharp yet playful commentary on ego, opportunism, power-seeking and human foolishness. This work includes translated narrative material, comic-page visualisations, author-background panels and contextual literary framing. It aims to make Parashuram’s humour accessible to contemporary readers while retaining the flavour of early twentieth-century Bengali comic prose. The visual style uses vintage Indian illustration, sepia ink-wash aesthetics, decorative panel borders, readable captions, and understated humour suitable for literary education, cultural archiving, digital humanities, storytelling, and public engagement. The project was developed with extensive use of generative AI tools for translation, adaptation, visual design and comic-page creation, under human direction, selection, editing and literary framing by the creator. It is intended as an educational and creative reinterpretation, not a replacement for the original literary text.