THE BAKER STREET TIMES


Holmes celebrated by fans in remote Indian state at Sherlock Holmes
festival
15 Mar 2002

GAUHATI, India (AP) - Sherlock Holmes came alive in India's remote
northeastern state of Mizoram when hundreds of admirers of The Great
Detective assembled to celebrate his exploits.




For decades, the Mizo tribespeople have been voracious Sherlock
Holmes readers. "Sherlock Holmes is known to people in all the 700
villages in my state," said P.L. Liandinga, a government social
worker who has translated all of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories about
Holmes into the Mizo language.



"Wherever I go, even in the remotest of villages, people know me as
the translator of the Holmes stories," said Liandinga, who was the
host of the Sherlock Holmes festival at his home on Sunday.

"We enacted a play on Doyle's 1890 short story, The Sign of Four. It
was fun," Liandinga said Monday from Aizawl, the Mizoram capital.

Mizoram is a predominantly Christian state that shares a border with
Myanmar and Bangladesh. The state of 800,000 people has a literacy
rate of more than 80 per cent - among the highest in India.

Liandinga started translating Doyle's works in 1977.

"The stories fascinated me right from my college days," he
said. "Doyle's language is extremely good and the mystery element
always baffled me."