Kolkata grabbed me in my innards: Kunal Basu

Kunal Basu. Photo courtesy of the author

Nov 1, 2016

Introduction

Would you like to be transported to other places and times? Romance the strange? Embark on perilous journeys of the self? Explore big questions and ideas? Be moved by poignant human stories of compassion and courage and unusual loves? Enter the fictional world of Kunal Basu, the foremost writer of historical fiction in post-millennial Indian-English literature.

When The Opium Clerk came out in 2001 and was followed soon after by the critically acclaimed The Miniaturist in 2003 — they announced the arrival of a new and rare talent in Indian-English fiction, who, unlike many others of his generation, was not taken up with contemporary India or parables of the nation. Instead, he explored unchartered territories — British opium trade and Mughal miniature painting in his first two novels; and then continued his adventure with Victorian racial science in Racists (2006), which was nominated for the Crossword Book Award); and the scourge of syphilis in The Yellow Emperor’s Cure (2011).

Though the historical novel is his forte, Basu has also written in other genres. His first collection of short stories, The Japanese Wife (2008), was widely popular, its title story being adapted for the screen by celebrated filmmaker Aparna Sen. He also wrote the narrative for a book of photographs by Kushal Ray, Intimacies (2001).

His latest novel, Kalkatta, is his first contemporary one — an unsparing look at the underbelly of the city, seen through the eyes of a Bihari Muslim gigolo. And soon to be published is a Bangla novel, once again set in the present, but also harking back to the Naxal movement of the 1970s in Calcutta (now Kolkata).

It is a lovely winter morning in Kolkata, and I go to interview him at his South Calcutta residence at Lake Road. It is a beautiful apartment bursting with books and art objects, and I am ushered in by his gracious wife, Susmita, before Kunal joins me for the interview. Later, I am introduced to their daughter, Aparajita, a doctoral student at Berkeley, who is at home on a short visit. I have a feeling of déjà vu — as I had experienced an almost identical scenario in 2008, though in his natal home at Purna Das Road, when I had taken another extensive interview of him for The IIAS Newsletter, ahead of his attendance at the Amsterdam-India Festival later that year.

The man who sits in front of me has been many things — artist, actor, author, and academic. The four “A”s, however, never sat easily with each other. Basu is a Professor at Said Business School at the University of Oxford, where he has been teaching since 1999, after an illustrious 13 years at McGill University in Canada — but he had never wanted to be an academic. Brought up on socialist ideals by his publisher father and writer/stage actor mother, both Left intellectuals of their time, Basu developed an early inclination for the arts that was to last a lifetime: as a child artist, he seemed promising to his parents; however, he left painting and became a professional theatre actor in his student days in the 1970s in Calcutta, and later in Montreal; but it is the author who ultimately won over all the other identities, the “A” that finally sealed his fate.

I first met him in BCL-Kolkata in 2004, at the release of the first critical book on his work edited by Professor Subir Dhar et al, to which I had contributed (Romancing the Strange: The Fiction of Kunal Basu). I have had an abiding interest in his work ever since.

A decade later, I myself co-edited a volume of essays with Professor Krishna Sen (Writing India Anew: Indian English Fiction, 2000-2010, 2013), where I placed his work and contribution in the context of recent trends in post-millennial Indian-English fiction. As a scholar specialising in this field, what I find very interesting is the way Basu has steered clear of the general preoccupations of postcolonial fiction; and as an academic and an aspiring creative writer, I am amazed at how he has managed to balance the demands of his double career as academic-writer for nearly two decades, a rare feat that few can pull off with such élan.

This interview was prompted by the publication of Kalkatta, but it is not only about the novel. That constitutes only the first section of the interview: three more sections follow.

The second takes a broader look at Basu’s work, the genres he has written in, and his writing life; in the third, we get his take on the literary ecosystem — on translations, literary festivals, the Internet, social media, book-trailers, and publishing in India; and the final section is about his own engagement with the sibling arts — with painting, theatre, and cinema.

Section 1: Kalkatta

RITUPARNA ROY: Congratulations on your fifth novel and sixth work of fiction — Kalkatta. It is, to use a very filmi word, hatke. Truly hatke. An unsparing look at the underbelly of the city — the city that is not Calcutta or Kolkata, but Kalkatta, inhabited by the marginalised. In this case, by a Bihari-Muslim refugee, Jamshed Alam or Jami, who has to turn to prostitution to rise up the social ladder and become a “Kalkatta-wallah”, his mother’s ultimate dream. What inspired you to write the novel? Was it any person you knew, a book, a film, a chance encounter... what was the moment of inspiration?

KUNAL BASU: As in most of my stories — with perhaps one exception, which is The Miniaturist — it never actually came to me in a flash. It was born out of aimlessly walking the streets of Kolkata. You see, in this city, I don’t use a car. When I have to, I usually rent one for a day or a few hours or take the taxi. But I actually walk. And I walk at all times of the day and night. This is my personal conversation with the city, if you wish. For a number of years, when I wasn’t even thinking of the story, I would walk around Sudder Street, Park Street, late at night, the alleys inside, and I would think: “Look at these exceptionally good-looking men sitting on motorcycles”. And they would be sitting outside mostly guest houses and sometimes even five-star restaurants or discos, wearing expensive watches, smoking foreign cigarettes, and I would think, “Who are these people? What are they waiting for? What is their business? Where do they get their money?” Obviously, it was hard for me to strike up conversations, but I’m a very persistent person when it comes to story-making. So, I started talking to some of these lodge-managers, or guest-house managers — and gradually, it sort of leaked out that some of them, not all of them, were tour guides for western budget travellers, take them to Kalighat, Dakshineswar and stuff like that, and some of them were gigolos. Some of them were both. And as I sort of trapesed my way through these alleys, the story of Jamshed Alam started talking shape in my mind. So, it was not guided by a theoretical premise — that look, Kolkata is a city of 14 million people, so many people are actually considered to be marginalised or refugees, they are the underbelly, it’s about time somebody told about the story of the underbelly. Because nobody has.

RITUPARNA ROY: Yes, which is why I said it is truly hatke.

KUNAL BASU: To be honest, one can post-talk rationalise it as such, but in my mind, the mind of a novelist, it usually doesn’t start with a premise. It starts with the whiff of a story, a sense of mystery, and things like that. So, that’s what it was with Kalkatta.

RITUPARNA ROY: The city of your birth came back into your work after 15 years. Reading Kalkatta, especially Jami’s overriding aspiration to be a “Kalkatta-wallah”, I was reminded of your first novel, The Opium Clerk — which is set in the 19th century colonial Calcutta, and is about a Bengali Brahmin boy, Hiranyagarbha or Hiran, a member of Young Bengal, who gets caught up in the opium trade of the British. Hiran and Jami (apart from the time that separates them), represent two opposite poles of the social spectrum — the most respectable class and the utterly marginalised. Was it a conscious effort on your part to make your protagonist a completely different character from what you did before?

KUNAL BASU: Again, it is not so. It was governed by something which is perhaps deeper in my personality. You may have traced that in my other pieces of writing as well. I’m a person who is drawn to the unfamiliar, to the strange. What I know, the life that I’ve led, the world that I’ve inhabited, is not inconsequential to me. But it doesn’t get my blood pressure up, doesn’t get me excited. So I am a Bangali, middle-class person, part of the cultural intelligentsia, who grew up in South Kolkata; and obviously I’ve stories about my childhood, my world, my para, my teashop, my school and my college, my loves and my losses, my wars, inside me. But telling those stories are not particularly exciting to me. Because in the ultimate analysis, I’m telling a story to myself, before I tell it to my readers. And in the process, telling it to my readers. So if I tell myself a story which I know — I know the beginning, I know how it transpired, I know the ending — it doesn’t excite me all that much. So in a known context, I search for, I explore for the unknown. I seek out people I have no reason to know. Some of them manifest themselves in this novel, some don’t. That search is endless, that search is just continuous. I’m looking to meet people today who smuggle rare birds. From time to time, you’ll get newspaper stories... I’m going to ramble a bit, if you don’t mind... you’ll get a newspaper story saying, “The police have raided a small little flat in Beleghata and they have found exotic birds.” And my mind would say, “Who are these people? Do they do it only for money? Do they love birds? Where do they go to find birds?” So, I’m now in the quest of people who steal birds and sell rare birds. Is there a specific story that I’m considering? Not at this point. But this quest may lead me to a story. So, to come to your question, I wasn’t consciously thinking, “I’ve done Hiran, I’ve done the mainstream, and I’m now going to do the marginal.”

RITUPARNA ROY: That was probably a stupid question to ask… I was just reminded of these two poles, you know.

KUNAL BASU: In a sense, there are similarities between Hiran and Jamshed; and you may even say there are similarities, to an extent, between Hiran and Jamshed and Bihzad — especially Bihzad after he is expelled from Fatehpur Sikri. Because these characters, in some sense, meander through life. Their lives or their destinies are determined, to a large extent, by their circumstances.

RITUPARNA ROY: But that is often the case with most people, isn’t it?

KUNAL BASU: Yes, I would like to think so. Now, some types of fiction, particularly post-war American fiction, is very purposive in its characterisation. So this is a person who wants to become this. And then the novel or the story is about his trials and tribulations, about how he reaches there. Or doesn’t. And that forms the basis of tragedy or comedy. If a person reads my novel from such perspective, then he might say: “What did Jami want to do? Did he always want to become a gigolo? Did he succeed? Did he dream to go to Dubai? Did he succeed?” When I started spending time with young boys like Jami in Zakaria Street and Sudder Street and Chitpur — which I have for three years — I realised that for the most part, these are a bunch of kids, who, because of the circumstances of their birth and life, are opportunity-driven. So, they are hanging by the side of the street. Somebody comes in and offers them a job as a courier in a mail-delivery company, the person might jump. Somebody else comes in and offers them a job in Hawala, they might jump. Or a satta, they might jump. So it’s very much contextual, it’s very momentary, it is opportunity-driven. And obviously, it’s goal is survival. So, in a sense, Jami doesn’t start out in life with a very clear goal in mind. As with Hiran. If you remember, Hiran fails his Sanskrit exams, he picks up some English, he has got an uncle who is an Anglophile, and by happenstance he ends up at the Auction House. And then his life journey begins. For a lot of people in the developing world and in our part of the world, this is a familiar journey. As you said immediately, “But isn’t that the way with lots of people?” But it’s not so for many parts of the developed world. They would say, well, “Who is this character? What does he want? Where is he heading?”

RITUPARNA ROY: A person should know what his life is like at 18…

KUNAL BASU: Exactly. So there are similarities, I think, in my protagonists. And I would like to say — perhaps somewhat in tongue-in-cheek — is that they perhaps reflect my journey through life.

RITUPARNA ROY: Whenever a book on Kolkata comes out — be it fiction or non-fiction — certain names are immediately invoked. Kipling, Clive, Gunter Grass, Naipaul, Lapierre. It’s almost become a rule now. For example, I just read two reviews of Kalkatta — they had very different things to say about the novel, but both began with the inevitable quote from Kipling. I find this strange. Because I think if you are talking about Kolkata, especially a book of fiction, then the frame of reference should be different — it should be Bangla writers who have lived here and written about the city, or filmmakers who have worked on it. I would like to place your work in this broader frame…

KUNAL BASU: I concur with you. I was chatting a few days back with a person who is a Professor of literature who said, well… He liked Kalkatta quite a bit, but he said, “You know, Bengali writers, Kallol juger lekhok… of the ’40s etc, they were perhaps more adventurous than contemporary writers in English.” And I actually concur with that statement. Bangla authors in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s — some of them struck to the territory that they knew well, which is bangali modhyo-bitto jiban (Bengali middle-class life). But some of them — Samaresh Bose is an example, who is a great inspiration of mine…

RITUPARNA ROY: I was just coming to that — who are your favourite Bangla writers or books on Kolkata?

KUNAL BASU: Books on Kolkata would be slightly hard to tell. But Samaresh Bose… BT Road is definitely part of Kolkata, now it’s no more a suburb of Kolkata. So, BT Roader Dhare would definitely qualify as one. Mahakaler Rather Ghoda, which was set in the world of the Naxal movement, has a very strong presence of Kolkata. And there are quite a few other works — Bibar and Prajapati, much reviled, much praised, as you know controversial novels of their time, and there were obscenity cases against both — were set in this world. So, Samaresh Bose — not only him, but he primarily, had gone outside of the comfort zone of the Bengali middle-class intellectual and explored that world. And it is that spirit that excites me a lot.

RITUPARNA ROY: Sunil Ganguly? Manik Bandyopadhyay?

KUNAL BASU: Manik Bandyopadhyay, yes. Not so much urban Kolkata, some of it. Sunil Ganguly had written about Kolkata, but Sunilda’s was probably more the mainstream Bengali sensibility.

RITUPARNA ROY: But I was thinking of… Well, the Bihari Muslim refugee is an altogether different category. But you know, in a novel like Purba-Paschim, especially its first part, you get to see Bengali Hindu refugee life in great detail, through the destitution that the protagonist Pratap’s family faces in Calcutta.

KUNAL BASU: Refugee literature, stories of Hindu refugees from Purba Bangla, Purba Pakistan to here, has been written about extensively — in short story, theatre, in novels, in cinema, Ritwik Kumar Ghatak, etc. Perhaps not as much in fiction, not as much as in full-length novels. But obviously, like all other mainstream people, the Bengalis are obsessed with Bengalis. But 56% of Kolkata’s population is non-Bengali. But they too inhabit this space, it is their city as much as it is a city of Bengalis.

RITUPARNA ROY: Is there any novel in Bangla which deals with Bihari Muslim refugees?

KUNAL BASU: Look, I don’t know. There might be, there must be. How can authors overlook people who are our co-citizens? But I have not gone looking for it.

RITUPARNA ROY: No I was not asking whether you had gone looking for it. I was asking since I don’t know.

KUNAL BASU: No, I don’t know. But, the reference to Kipling, which you started out with — to a large extent, Indian Writing in English has not yet trodden the same path. It could be coming. This is not a condemnation. As writers explore different worlds… published Indian Writing in English is fairly a recent phenomenon. So as more and more people explore this world, they will explore different facets of it. But as an author, I’m tempted, I’m provoked, I’m excited by what I don’t know. And this was a world… once I thought of the story, I said, “Look, I’ll come out a different person (which I think I have) after I’ve written this novel.” Because it will take me to a place — not simply physically, not in terms of simply people, but also in terms of sensibilities that were not a part of my repertoire.

RITUPARNA ROY: So is it a kind of parallel experience of what you faced as a student? You’d said once that your life as an activist made you a more real person, and not just a “culture wallah”. Was it a similar kind of experience?

KUNAL BASU: Yes, absolutely. It would have been very easy for me to become a part of the beautiful set. A lot of my friends did. It is not a condemnation of them. They chose what they wanted to be. In other words, sitting in cafes and talking about books, and going and doing some plays, and having a reasonable interest in this world — but only up until that point. But thrown into the world of the Emergency, and fighting against the Emergency, I was just telling somebody the other day… I was sent to Circular Garden Reach Road which was then named Karl Marx Sarani. Later, I was sent to the Hindustan Steel’s dumping grounds called Shonai. Which Bengali film lovers would know as the place where Satyajit Ray shot Parash Pathar (The Philosopher’s Stone). When Tulsi Banerjee is in the car and he looks out. He has Parash Pathar and he is looking for iron. And he sees this place where there are mountains of iron. That is Shonai dumping yard for Hindustan Steel. Right next to the port. I was sent to work there as a political activist. And I realised that Bangla was a foreign language there, because everybody there spoke only Hindi or Oriya. And being thrown into the water, actually, instead of creating a withdrawal symptom in me, fascinated me. I said, “Yes, this is a world I don’t know.” I stayed with a comrade who was a worker in the factory, and every day he would come back from work and diligently make roti and alur tarkari. But each roti was like five rotis at home. How can you eat that? And it was very rude of me to refuse. So the dinner was a more tortuous experience…!

With daughter Ajlai at Zakaria Street in Kolkata. All photos courtesy of the author

RITUPARNA ROY: Any metropolis, I think, has these different worlds — which attracts a lot of migrants.

KUNAL BASU: Any metropolis, to my mind — and Kolkata is no exception — is like the universe. And there are different planets in the universe. You live in Pluto. I live in Mars. You know your Pluto very well. I know my Mars very well. And we pass by each other silently in the universe. But we don’t know each other’s worlds at all. Maybe we are standing by the side of the street, both waiting to catch a taxi, but our destinations are very different. The purposes of our journeys are very different. In some ways, I wanted to explore inter-planetary space. What happens when the planets collide? What happens when Mandira and Jami, the Keyatola girl and the Zakaria Street boy meet? There is a small part in this book when Mandira has no money, and she says: “Maybe I should sell this house. Maybe I can rent a place, and maybe I can rent somewhere close to where you live.” And Jami thinks, “Mandira in Zakaria Street…?”

RITUPARNA ROY: Yes, and then there is this scene, which is one of the most humorous parts of the book — where Mandira’s friends all gather together. They are all poets, of different ages, and they immediately assume that Jami is a poet too, and they ask him: “What do you write about?” And there is one line which says… that filling up passport forms is far more difficult than writing poetry.

In an earlier interview with me, you had made a very interesting distinction between “surface autobiography” and “deep autobiography”, saying that “surface autobiography” was is all about the facts of one’s life, whereas “deep autobiography” is is about fundamentals — it’s about beliefs and ideals and interests. For you, they have been social justice, history, romance — so those will always make their presence felt in your fiction. Kalkatta is, at one level, obviously about the need for belonging — about a refugee family moving from place to place, seeking shelter and stability in a new home, and how they are always denied that. But it’s ultimately about social justice, isn’t it? There is this line about Ammi, Jami’’s mother, at the very beginning of the novel: She was tired of… spending her entire life begging for a tiny spot she could call her own in Allah’s vast universe (page 8). That’’s my favourite line in the novel… and I think it’’it’ll stay with me. This interest of yours in social justice — not just in this, but in other books as well — has it to do with the influence of your parents? The fact that you were brought up on socialist ideals?

KUNAL BASU: Yes, I think so. You know, the socialist ideology has worn thin. But I think... the key impact of my formative years…. All the books, all the talk round the dinner table, my father getting arrested for political work…

RITUPARNA ROY: He was one of the earliest members of the Communist Party…

KUNAL BASU: He was. And my mother too was a cultural activist from the Left, IPTA... I think the key impact of all of that culture and politics has been — empathy for the dispossessed. In a large five-star hotel party, which very infrequently I would go…. When I’m in a big cocktail lounge, where the good and the great of society are mingling about, my eyes would be drawn to the waiters who are serving. I would think: “What are they thinking? Are they thinking at all? Is it so routine? Are they thinking, ‘When can I finish and go back to my child’”. I don’t want to make a huge virtue out of this. All I’m saying is that, our minds are formed at a very early age, and mine was formed in a way so that it empathises with those who haven’t had as good as myself. I don’t write books or novels to expressly manifest this particular empathy of mine, but invariably I show my hand. I think authors eventually show their hands, no matter how skilful they are in guarding it or concealing it, they would show their hands.

RITUPARNA ROY: A continuing thread in your work is the power of compassion in human lives — of how people are drawn beyond themselves by the suffering of others, and how they create unusual bonds and relationships. Well, everybody knows about The Japanese Wife , which was an unusual tale of love. And in fact that whole collection of shorts was about unusual loves — which is what I loved about the book. But I have in mind another relationship, which you have cast in a new light in several of your books — that of man, woman and child. Not the traditional family — but of strangers coming together, forming sort of a surrogate family; and more often than not, it’s a child who brings it about.

For example here, Jami’s renewed relationship with his ex-colleague Mandira, has to do with her child Pablo. In The Japanese Wife — obviously it’s about the epistolary romance between Snehamoy and Miyagi, but it is also about his relationship with the widow Sandhya. You say beautifully that with one he had marriage without domesticity, and with the other he had domesticity without marriage. But for me, one of the most poignant relationships in that story is that of Snehamoy with Sandhya’s son. In Racists, the relationship that the mute nurse has with the two children of the racial experiment in Arlinda, off the coast of Africa, and the attendant Nick.

Is this recurring theme a kind of indirect social critique? That you know these relationships exist — but it is the heteronormative family, and very often the legal family, that is celebrated, talked about, written about — but these relationships exist as much as the others; and society and people at large should acknowledge their presence and accept them more. Is that it?

KUNAL BASU: Our capacity to love other human beings is actually endless. Particular situations, circumstances and mind frames draw us to people who you would not necessarily consider to be targets of love. Who would’ve imagined that Jami, who by then has become quite street smart, who after all is a male prostitute and makes his money through providing services of a very intimate kind — why would a person like that be drawn to the suffering of a little boy who has no future? And as I was writing the novel, what was going through my mind was — this is the most natural thing for Jami to have. This boy has actually lost the kernel of his innocence. His mother, whom he very much loves, has now become a stranger, because she has to make a living as a zari worker. His father, about whom he definitely has an affection, is busy with his own life as a satta. Miri, his sister… “Miri was my best friend before Rakib”, he had said that at the beginning.” Miri has matured into her own personality and has her own world. Jami does not really have a strong emotional bond — a bond that he can rely on, a bond that he can nurture himself.

RITUPARNA ROY: An anchoring factor?

KUNAL BASU: An anchoring factor. So who can be his anchor? Now, yes, he could fall in love. If I thought of a story in which he does, then he might have. But to me Pablo is a natural attraction for Jami. Why? Because there is a line in this book where I say, “Neither Pablo nor I have a future”. Jami has no future in this city, Pablo has no future in life. And both of them have this tremendous bond. Therefore he becomes really emotional when he is beaten up, and he comes back and lies down, and Pablo says, “Baba”. And he says, “It’s the most beautiful word a man could hope to hear in his entire life.” Which is true!

RITUPARNA ROY: What struck me about Kalkatta, given that it deals with a gigolo king, is its lack of sex. I felt that you spared us the dirt filth grime of gigolo work. You give us a lot of details about the business, no doubt — how it starts, the kind of clients that usually seek such service, the insecurities of the job, etc. But except for that one scene with a high-class lady who burns Jami’s chest with her cigarette, each burn adding Rs 2,000 rupees to his price, we don’t get much. That scene is very well done, very subtle. There is a certain sensuous quality to your language, to your prose &md

In a corner of his huge personal library at his Kolkata residence

Section II: On Oeuvre/literary genres/writing

RITUPARNA ROY: This is your first contemporary novel. All the previous four were set in earlier epochs — The Opium Clerk in colonial Calcutta, Kuching, Canton; The Miniaturist in Mughal India; Racists in the Victorian period; The Yellow Emperor’s Cure in 19th century Portugal and China. Is it easier to write a contemporary novel? What are its special challenges vis-à-vis the historical novel?

KUNAL BASU: If it is easier, I haven’t found it to be so. Ease or difficulty is not something that I usually associate as a point of methodology. For me the more relevant question is — is it more or less challenging? Challenge, not in a negative sense. Would it stretch me more or less? In my mind — more or less. I haven’t found a major difference in that regard. The real difference for me writing a contemporary novel to a historical novel is, the kind of immersion. As someone was asking me, “How does one create another time and place? Is there a methodology?” For me… different authors have different methodologies. My methodology is that of Stanislavski’s method acting. I draw a lot from theatre, by the way, because I had a background in theatre. So, Stanislavski’s books, which are here — my parents’ books — they are about how to get into character. How to start eating like the character would eat, or dressing like the character would dress. And in that process, there is never any verisimilitude between reality and art. There never is and there never will be. But to close that gap as much as possible.

RITUPARNA ROY: Inhabit it?

KUNAL BASU: Yes, inhabit the world. Why is that important? It is important to create believability. That’s the first hurdle to cross. To make the character or place believable to you, the reader. If you don’t find this believable, then you are not going to come on a ride with me. This is a dubious car, you’ll say. But if I can convince you that this is a robust vehicle for you to come on board, then I can take you with my imagination to places which are of my doing. So the immersion for historical fiction is largely library research-based. Based on published works. And there is also variety in that — it doesn’t only have to be historical stuff. It can be diaries, it can be photographs, it can be archival stuff and things like that.

But one thing that I’ve always avoided in writing historical fiction is actually to go to the place before I’ve written about it. Largely because… I’ve been asked this question… you see, I went to Kuching a good 10 years after I had written The Opium Clerk. Because I didn’t want my historical imagination to be sullied by the present architecture of the place. Because in Kuching you’ve McDonald’s now. In the 19th century, the Kuching of the white rajahs, there was no McDonald’s. It was a very different place, right? I didn’t want that image to sort of stand and guard the image of the 19th century. I went to Lisbon, after I’d written the opening segment — which is the Lisbon segment of — The Yellow Emperor’s Cure. I went to Lisbon later — Susmita and I went — and as I got off the airport, I saw the jacarandas and I said, “I’ve written about this”! Like a little boy, I said, “I’ve written about this”! The lilac jacarandas of Lisbon. Whereas in writing a contemporary novel, one has to rediscover one’s relationship with that reality. So, what do I mean by that? What I mean is… Burrabazar — have I been to Burrabazar before writing this novel? Many times. But I’ve never had a relationship with Burrabazar. I’ve gone there because... I don’t know why... probably to buy something that was only available there. Or I wanted to cut through Burrabazar and go somewhere else. I had no real reason to be there. I had no relationship with Burrabazar. But now, I have a reason to have a relationship with Burrabazar. Because it is a neighbourhood of Zakaria Street. Nothing will ever happen in Burrabazar, but it’ll be there... surrounding... for the halwa-puri may come from there. And things like that. The bhang will come from there. Especially on (Maha) Shivratri. So I had to create a new relationship with Burrabazar. To say what do I actually feel about this place. And likewise, with Zakaria Street, I would only go to taste Halim during Muharram. Used to go to Amenia Musafirkhana, which is right across Nakhoda mosque, to have Halim. This time I found the quality of Halim has declined. I had no relationship. And right next to it is Chitpur. And Chitpur has lots of very exciting things about it, including Sonagachhi… for voyeuristic purposes, of course! But I had no relationship with Zakaria Street.

RITUPARNA ROY: As we are talking about writing a contemporary novel and its challenges, I wanted you to talk a little about one of your main resources for Kalkatta — Jaigovind Indoria. You had written about him in one of your Facebook posts. I’d like you to bring that bit into this interview.

KUNAL BASU: So I knew that I had to find someone. Because, otherwise how would I be able to go into a household and ask to see family albums? How can I go to the roof and fly kites with the boys? How can I go and taste pickles? Samina’s pickles have been important to me, you know. I needed somebody who was an insider. It’s difficult to find an insider. It’s a world of small traders….

RITUPARNA ROY: Would Kalkatta have happened if you had just talked to the men on the street? And not talked to Indoria?

KUNAL BASU: It wouldn’t have. You can always go and say, “Achha dada, shunben? Can I talk to you for a minute?” Invariably they’ll question: “Are you a journalist?”, “No, I’m not a journalist. I’m a writer”, “A writer? Oh, ah, kya hain?”… Anyway you know I can chat up people... I can chat them up…. but it wouldn’t have happened. Because when somebody is giving you a response, they are not actually inviting you inside their lives. I want people to invite me inside their lives. And that can only happen through an insider. So to retell the story a little bit, I was at the JLF (Jaipur Literature Festival) with my previous novel and I had gone to one of these parties… although I’m an awkward person at parties. I don’t mingle easily. I was sitting in a corner and I overheard this guy talking to somebody in Bangla, in a Marwari… a non-Bengali accent. I asked him apni ki kolkatar and he said yes. Where do you live? Zakaria Street. I said, ‘Ah!’ So I started chatting with him and asked, ‘What do you do there?’ He is a Marwari…

RITUPARNA ROY: A businessman?

KUNAL BASU: No, he is a very uncharacteristic Marwari. He is a social worker, runs a number of charities in Zakaria Street and thereabouts — health-related, education, education for girls... he is everybody’s go-to man…

RITUPARNA ROY: A godfather?

KUNAL BASU: Not in a mafia sense…

RITUPARNA ROY: No, I mean in a benign sense…

KUNAL BASU: Yes, he is everybody’s good friend. He has a small flat in Zakaria Street, where he lives. He also has a place in Lake Gardens but he says, “I can’t sleep well when I come to Lake Gardens.” I went to his small little flat in Zakaria Street — he has lived there for years, that’s where his life is. He knows everybody. Unfortunately, the amount of tea that I’ve had to drink… so, there’s a cost to everything you know! And there you cannot say that my tea has no shakkar, no milk… you can’t do that.

RITUPARNA ROY: You have to have chai, with lots of milk and sugar in it.

KUNAL BASU: And I don’t like that tea. Masala chai and all… I’m not into that. So, I had to drink a lot of bad tea… He knew everybody. People who have a lot of relatives in Bangladesh, killed in 1971 because Bihari Muslims were considered to be collaborators with the Pak regime, then gems and jewellery sellers, people who make ittar, then the slaughter houses… the horrible stink of the slaughter houses still lingers in my nostrils. The flying of the kites, the Nakhoda Mosque…

RITUPARNA ROY: It is an important landmark in the book.

KUNAL BASU: The Nakhoda Mosque — very important, built by the Guijrati Memons. The Imam of the mosque is a very friendly, relatively young person. The first question I asked him was — “What do you think of a Salman Rushdie?” And we had a long conversation over Salman Rushdie. And he said, “Use likhne do. He writes what he writes. Mujhe kya? Mussalmano ko kya?” So he had a very open and broad and liberal view about things.

RITUPARNA ROY: Not the kind of Imam one would have thought?

KUNAL BASU: No. And then the young boys — the likes of Jami. Some of the dons. Some of those who are involved in very dubious trade. I am very drawn to people who are ex-dons, who are now retired! Who because of failing health — hoi na, parai, you used to be mortally scared of a guy who was a real rough-tough. Thirty years later, you see he is going to the ration shop with a bag and a stick. I’m really drawn to these guys!

So, there’s a character called Manna Mia. He and his brothers used to be heroin traders. They had really Nawabi lifestyle, but he is sort of a whimpering person now. So, Indoria introduced me to a lot of people. I also met a Bengali, which you don’t normally meet in Zakaria Street. An 80-year-old Bengali, who came up to Jaigovindji and said, “Ini ke?” And I introduced myself, and he again looked at Jaigovindji and said, “Tumi er moto loker sathe ki kore mishle?” Ridiculous! And I then realised that he had been in Zakaria Street when the great Calcutta killings happened (August 16, 1947), and his family was saved by a Muslim gentleman who gave shelter to him. He is not a part of my novel… you see, you pick up lots of things which you don’t use — so he and his family and a lot of other Hindus were given shelter by a Muslim gentleman in a neighbouring house while the rampage was going on in Zakaria Street. As in other parts of Kolkata. The military came in, was sent in a few days after the riots started — about which there is a lot of question why. And then they were taken out and became refugees in other parts — Hindu parts — of the city. I asked, “What happened to this Muslim gentleman?” He said, “When the military came, the Muslim gentleman said that they should escort him straight to the Dum Dum airport. And he flew off to Bombay. Because, if it was found out that he had given shelter to Hindus, then he would be slaughtered. I asked the old Bengali man, “Did you ever meet him later?” And he said, “Yes, we bought his house later.”

So Jaigovindji introduced me to a lot of different people. And I felt that in the process he sort of knew what I was writing about… it’s very hard to explain that my central character is a gigolo. If I say my central character is a gigolo, then why do I want to see family albums of people? So my story had to be kept a little bit under wraps. And some of them thought that I was writing a story about Zakaria Street. Also funny things happen. Because when Pinaki was shooting this film on me in Zakaria Street, which I think you have seen, most people were not bothered. There was just this one guy, menacing looking, in a butcher shop, who said: “Yeh kaun hain? Kya chal raha hain yahan pe?” So Pinaki said, “We are doing a series on street food, he — pointing at me — is the Head Chef of Taj Bengal.” So I became Head Chef of Taj Bengal for a few minutes!

RITUPARNA ROY: Coming back to your writing — obviously, you are known as a novelist. But you have also written a highly acclaimed collection of shorts, the title story of which was filmed by Aparna Sen, The Japanese Wife. But you started life as a poet — in Bangla, and then also wrote in English. So, when can we expect a book of poems from you? And in which language?

KUNAL BASU: Could be both. I’m not sure. I have to give myself the kind of time and liberty to go back to poetry. I think poetry doesn’t suffer distraction. Novels don’t either. Or short stories. I am not the kind of person who is doing two projects at the same time. I can’t do that. Some people can, but I can’t do that. But when I’m writing a novel, sometimes I can think of another story. I can say, “Let’s keep this story with me… I’ll write about it later.” But I think poetry will not allow me to be distracted. In my mind, I need to create a space where I am absolutely still. I thought I would go away with my poetry to a country that I had never been to before. Not even a country where there are destinations I want to visit. But just a place that I’ve never been to before and rent myself a room and stay there for a while. So, there will be no temptation for sight-seeing, where there’ll be nothing touristy to do. I’ll simply be in that alien environment with my most intimate self. And then perhaps I’ll be able to write.

RITUPARNA ROY: Is it not possible to collect all your existing poetry?

KUNAL BASU: No, I don’t want to do that. I think I need to emotionally re-visit my poems.

RITUPARNA ROY: Do you write lyric poetry? Or narrative poetry?

KUNAL BASU: I don’t write lyrical poetry. I mean I don’t know how to classify them… it’s not that I feel uncomfortable. It’s not that. But I need to belong to the same emotional space with my poetry, to be able to offer it to others. I’m in the emotional space of Kalkatta, so I’m able to offer it to my readers.

RITUPARNA ROY: Who are your favourite poets?

KUNAL BASU: A number of them actually. I was recently in Paris, during the Paris attacks. On a Sunday, when the city was in mourning and in shock, I went to see one of my favourite poets — Guillaume Apollinaire, who was buried in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery. Apollinaire is particularly attractive to me for a number of reasons. He was a poet among painters. So, in a way, he dwelt in the realm of the arts… he had multiple immersions... the world of words, the world of painting. He is one of my favourite poets. But there are many others — Charles Baudelaire… I mean, talking of French poetry, Baudelaire is an all-time favourite of mine. Lorca is a favourite of mine. I went to Lorca’s house, near Granada, in 2014.

RITUPARNA ROY: And Bangla poets?

KUNAL BASU: Jibanananda Das definitely, Shakti Chattopadhyay definitely, Sankha Ghosh, and also Rabindranath.

RITUPARNA ROY: You are now writing a Bangla novel?

KUNAL BASU: I have finished writing it, in 2015. A little bit of copy-editing work remains. In 2016, hopefully, that should be published as well.

RITUPARNA ROY: What took you so long to write a Bangla novel?

KUNAL BASU: I don’t have a very good answer to the question. I started my publishing life, if one can call it publishing life, grandiose term as that, with writing in Bangla. Obviously short stories. And which Bangali man or woman hasn’t written poetry? So some bad poetry in Bangla. And some essays — literary criticism in Bangla. I remember one of my early pieces was on Solzhenitsyn, after he had won the Nobel Prize. And it was critical of Solzhenitsyn. Obviously, given my political persuasion at the time. But then I had moved on, almost mysteriously, to writing in English; and then, I had always thought, that a time will come in my life when I would like to write in Bangla again. Not exclusively in Bangla, but also in Bangla. And I’d been, sort of, planning this and planning that — but frankly, there were queue jumpers. The novels and the short-stories that I had written in the interim, jumped the queue, and begged to be written. But when I finished Kalkatta — and this is, I think, the better answer to your question… Kalkatta brought me squarely back into the city, in a writing and literary sense. And my Bangla novel is also set in Kolkata, in the present time, although it has a very strong past connection as well.

RITUPARNA ROY: It is about the Naxal movement?

KUNAL BASU: It is not about the Naxal movement, not expressly so. It is about two individuals who meet after 30 years, accidentally, in a fish market. And these two individuals, 30 years back, during the Naxal period in the 70s, were mortal enemies. One was a police officer and the other was a Naxalite. Both young in age, and each could have killed the other. And came very close to doing so. But 30 years later, the tide has turned, it is a different kind of world. The two individuals are in different stations in life. The ex-Naxal is now actually part of the affluent upper-middle class; and the police officer is a retired person, living a pretty ordinary life. So, what do they make of their present in the light of their past is what the story is about. So, it moves on in the present time, when they meet and they are awkward. And many things happen to them, and they do things to each other which they hadn’t quite planned. So that’s sort of the kind of novel it is. But writing Kalkatta brought me back to the streets of the city, to the tea-shops of the city, to the rooftops flying kites, once again. In many ways, that sort of took me over the edge.

RITUPARNA ROY: Has writing become easier after 15 years? Can you just sit down and write anything you want?

KUNAL BASU: If it is too easy, then I probably won’t do it. If it is something that one can do with one’s eyes closed, then why do it?

RITUPARNA ROY: My question was not so much about whether you would want it to be easy. But I’m just talking about the process. You’ve been writing for more than 15 years — The Opium Clerk came out in 2001, so it’s been more than 15 years of devoted writing. Has the process of writing become easier after all this time?

KUNAL BASU: There are two kinds of things when I think of process. One is the process of life which allows writing to happen. In other words, there are lots of things one has to do — earn a living, travel places, run a household, and do one’s writing. That process has become easier. No question. I’ve wrenched myself loose from my academic job to a very large extent now.

RITUPARNA ROY: And how have you managed to do that?

KUNAL BASU: I’ve struck a relationship with my employer — with Oxford University. And put them under threat that if I… my writing life is the most important part of my life. I’ve made it public to my employers and said that, Look, this is what I’ll do. I can do a little bit of my academic things in a short period of time during the year. If that is acceptable to you, then I continue to be a part academic… otherwise, I will sort of shed these clothes.

RITUPARNA ROY: And you are very important for them, so they have kept you?

KUNAL BASU: For the moment, yes. But then, nobody is indispensable.

RITUPARNA ROY: But obviously, this was unthinkable 15 years back — when you were a full blown academic?

KUNAL BASU: And also because I didn’t know where my obsession would take me then. Writing is the mother of all obsessions. When I wrote The Opium Clerk, it was still possible to be a completely full-blooded academic and a writer of fiction. Getting published internationally, which has its own demands. But I didn’t know that this journey would actually turn me into a nut case. That nothing in life would really seem to be very valuable, except my writing. Not even the outcome of my writing, in the sense… all the social aspects of it. How is the book doing? These are important aspects.

RITUPARNA ROY: I find it remarkable — given my own background and profession — that you had these parallel careers for this long; that you were a full-blown academic and you churned out a book every two years! I don’t know how you did it!

KUNAL BASU: Look, I don’t give myself a huge amount of credit for that. I did it because I had to save my life, you know. Because you see, I am an accidental academic. I never wanted to be a Professor of business. If you ask the teachers who taught me in South Point, in school, and say, “Kunal… This is what he does for a living,” they’ll say... “What! We’d thought he’ll be an artist. Or he’ll be an actor”. So this was not my chosen path. Like Jami — he didn’t choose his career, right?! This is what I fell into and tried the best I could manage to do. But the more important thing for me is that… the only thing that I give myself credit for — honestly, the only thing that I give myself credit for is: I did not want to be somebody who said one day: “You know, when I was young, I wanted to be a writer. It didn’t happen. Too bad.” I didn’t want to be that.

RITUPARNA ROY: You were taking about the writing process….

KUNAL BASU: Now the question of — has the actual process of conceiving a story, thinking about it, planning it, researching it, writing it, has it become easier? No. The reason it hasn’t become easier is because I’ve not allowed myself the luxury of writing in a specific genre in a specific domain.

RITUPARNA ROY: Yes, your novels explore so very different worlds.

KUNAL BASU: Say, for example, after I wrote The Miniaturist, which was recei-ved reasonably well, there was some expectation of another Mughal novel.

RITUPARNA ROY: One Mughal novel... and hence... followed by a trilogy.

KUNAL BASU: Yes, maybe I could do a trilogy, maybe I could... there are so many Mughal stories to tell, you know. Maybe a later Mughal. May be even about Babur, who knows? But I didn’t want to go there anymore. So all this reading up, this preparation… and not simply the research, but the writing methodology, the voice…

RITUPARNA ROY: That is what I’m saying… You can’t follow a template for writing, right? It is different for different novels.

KUNAL BASU: Exactly. And then I go to Racists. Where the voice is completely different, you know — the voice of the narrator, the tone of the narrator…

RITUPARNA ROY: Yes, from Mughal India and miniature painting, you went straight to Victorian England and racial science. I feel that you are forever running away from yourself. After Victorian England, again, you just wrenched yourself away from that world, that place. It’s almost as if you tell yourself, “I’ll have nothing to do with this anymore.”

KUNAL BASU: Which probably hints at... again I’m no literary critic — that the core of my writing persona is this journey. It’s not these destinations that I have touched. One destination may appeal to a certain reader, another destination may not be. For example, there’s somebody who told me in Delhi. “I loved Kalkatta, and it almost comes as close to The Opium Clerk, which is my favourite novel.” I said, “Ok, I’ll take that.” My agent says that The Miniaturist is a favourite novel. There are those who’ve written that Racists is probably going to be the novel most talked about 25 years from now, when people talk about 21st century writing. Because it was — I’m not saying this — truly a novel about ideas. Which is very unusual in the 21st century. Because 21st century novels are hardly about ideas. And some people loved it. Someone mentioned that The Japanese Wife has many takers. The Yellow Emperor’s Cure appeals to a lot of people who are into the classic historical romance. And they also feel that it is a very sensual novel and things like that. Kalkatta has taken me by surprise. Because you know, when I was doing this, I wasn’t thinking about reader’s reactions, frankly — I never think about reader’s reactions, I think about my reaction. But everywhere I go these days, people seem to be saying good things about Kalkatta. It may change tomorrow — people may say all bad things about Kalkatta. So these different destinations appeal to different visitors. But perhaps what’s been the essence for me has been this travel. This journey. I don’t know where I’m going next. That’s partly the fun. I know where I’ve gone after Kalkatta. I don’t know where I’m going to go after that.

With wife Susmita

RITUPARNA ROY: Has the writing life changed you as a person? What has been its greatest reward, and what has been the greatest price?

KUNAL BASU: The greatest price is complete obsessiveness. It is not to be confused with narcissism. It is not to be confused with arrogance. Somebody was asking me, “Are you proud of this?” Now, pride is a sensation or an emotion which is absent in me. Really. It must be the way I’ve grown up. Nobody has ever grabbed me and said, “That’s great, Kunal! Fabulous! Very well done!” Nobody has ever done that to me, when I was growing up. About anything. On the football pitch, or in art school, or in school, where I was a reasonably good student. Nobody has really praised me in a sense for me to develop this sense that, oh, I’m actually prized by people. I’m precious. So, to this date, the sensation of pride is absent in me. In fact, if you praise me too much, something at the back of my head will tell me there’s something wrong.

So, the biggest prize is obsessiveness. It has made me a less interesting person. Because there was a time when I could have all kinds of conversations about all kinds of different things. I’m still a very much a curious person, of course. It’s not that I’m not. But my mind… there is this metaphor in The Mahabharata, when Arjun goes to the Swayambar Sabha, and the challenge is he has to win Draupadi. I can’t say the exact lines… but it is a very important metaphor for me. My eyes are now the eyes of Arjun on the eyes of the fish. I can’t wrench myself away from that, as much as I try. I go to sleep thinking about it. I wake up in the morning thinking about it. Going for a walk, I say, “What I’m writing now... is it working? What if I write it differently? What if I did this? What if I did that?”

RITUPARNA ROY: Everything else is rendered irrelevant?

KUNAL BASU: Not irrelevant, but it sort of forms the backdrop of my life.

RITUPARNA ROY: Has it also been its greatest reward — this obsessiveness?

KUNAL BASU: It has been its greatest reward — because honestly, I wouldn’t know how I would have led my life. Because, see, I was and still am, to some extent, in a profession that I don’t really like. I have done reasonably well in it. But it’s not something that gets me up and going. I’m not into some of the things that other people find interesting — like, making a lot of money, or having social power and status, being able to control the lives of others, etc. I’ve no interest in that. So, how would I have led a whole life? I don’t have hobbies. So I wouldn’t say that actually I like making toy-cars. Or things like that. So, what would I do with my life?

I remember, after The Opium Clerk came out, Maggie McKernan, who was my Commissioning Editor at Weidenfeld… we were walking along somewhere, and I said: “You know, Maggie, I really need to thank you for indulging in the fantasy of a middle-aged man.” And she said, “You know, this is a wonderful fantasy to indulge in.”

But you know, sometimes obsessiveness… it is a fine line… if obsession leads to narcissism — which happens to a lot of writers that I see in the literary circuit all around, who think no end of themselves — then oftentimes, there is a heavier price to pay. Heavier price is rejection of others. You know, sort of moving away from others and solely concerned with one’s writing. But fortunately, that hasn’t happened with me. And there, what you started out saying, what has stayed with me is that — actually my writing is meaningless without life. And if I stop engaging with life and stop being curious, and if I lose my wonder of life, then all this writing will be meaningless to me.

RITUPARNA ROY: How has it affected your personal life? I know that Susmitadi really engages with your work. So you are lucky there?

KUNAL BASU: I’m incredibly lucky with Susmita. I don’t know whether she is as lucky with me.

RITUPARNA ROY: I don’t think she is. I don’t think it is easy to have a writer husband…

KUNAL BASU: That’s a question she can answer, not me. We are a very bookish family. Susmita, Ajlai and I are great pals when it comes to books. We are always talking about books, arguing, disagreeing, agreeing, buying books, reading books…

RITUPARNA ROY: So that way, you belong to the same family?

KUNAL BASU: Absolutely. There’s a very strong bond when it comes to books. Yes, and Susmita is a very powerful door-god, like the Chinese have door-gods, you know. Because, besides everything else that she does, she knows how to protect your writing space.

RITUPARNA ROY: Would writing have been more difficult for you had you been a woman? That probably you may have not had as understanding a spouse, that there might not have been a door-god husband?

KUNAL BASU: Very hard to answer, I’ll tell you why. Because we live in a world which has two features. One is the generalised truth and the other is the specific truth. At a generalised level, is a woman’s life harder or more challenging than a man’s? Unquestioningly so. That’s the generalised truth. And there’s no question about that. And then there are specific truths that have to do with individuals. My mother was an obsessive writer and she brought us up. My father was an extremely compassionate and feminist man. They were both in the left movement. So I don’t think she had any difficulty.

RITUPARNA ROY: And this was a generation back.

KUNAL BASU: So the thing is, I find it slightly difficult to generalise when it comes to matters of demographics and things like that. Because there are generalised truths. Which I’ll agree absolutely with. But the life of a writer is a very specific circumstance. This is how it stands out for me. It could have been more difficult, you know. Even as a man.

With Sharmila Tagore at the Kolkata Literary Meet, 2016

Section III: The Literary Ecosystem

RITUPARNA ROY: Translations are a very important means of disseminating a writer’s work. All your books have been translated. Which has been the most popular? And a technical question — do translations always happen much later?

KUNAL BASU: Always later than the original book, because once the book is out or the MS is ready, it gets sold in the Frankfurt Book Fair. And if a foreign language publisher buys the rights, it usually takes a year to a year-and-a-half for the translation to come out. That’s the fastest. It can also happen later. The Japanese Wife in Greek happened recently. Le Miniaturist in French has been my most circulated translated work. The French found the notion of the Moghul miniature and that world to be very attractive. It really had a lot of play, not simply among readers, but also in academic circles and literary circles. Whenever I go to Paris, I’m usually introduced as “He is the author of The Miniaturist.” Like in some places people would say “He is the author of The Japanese Wife.” Also in Turkey, The Miniaturist, because The Miniaturist is often times compared to My Name is Red. And there has been tracks written.

RITUPARNA ROY: The English translation of My Name is Red and The Miniaturist came out in the same year.

KUNAL BASU: Exactly. So there has been a lot of academic discussions around those two books... I’m given to understand. And gone into multiple editions. So, The Miniaturist has had more play, as it were, in terms of translated works.

RITUPARNA ROY: Literary festivals are mushrooming everywhere. Is there a hierarchy to them? How does India fare in that order?

KUNAL BASU: India fares very significantly. Largely because of the Jaipur Literture Festival (JLF). The JLF is the king of all festivals. It has an attractive venue. Literary festivals are everywhere. Much more in the Indian subcontinent than elsewhere. America has only two literary festivals. In the UK…

RITUPARNA ROY: Kolkata has recently started its own.

KUNAL BASU: Not recently. Kolkata Literary Meet (KLM) has been there for what — four years already. Kolkata has three. There is the Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival, Kolkata Boi Mela has its own Literary Festival.

RITUPARNA ROY: Yes, Boi Mela was always there.

KUNAL BASU: No, they have a two-day literary festival within Boi Mela. My session was on February 5 this year. Bombay has three. I think Delhi probably has one. And there are smaller towns like Patna which has a literary festival. Hyderabad has one. Chandigarh has one. So many in India itself.

RITUPARNA ROY: Pakistan also has — Karachi, Lahore.

KUNAL BASU: Islamabad. Dhaka Lit Fest I just went to.

RITUPARNA ROY: So now the subcontinent itself has a lot.

KUNAL BASU: Yes. And I’ve lost count of the ones that I’ve been to.

RITUPARNA ROY: Yes, I wanted to know — which are the ones you liked? You’ve been to the JLF almost every year, right?

KUNAL BASU: I almost make it a rule that I will not accept a LF invitation unless I have a new book that year. Largely because, there is something inside me which says that I shouldn’t become a talking head. And pontificating on literature and stuff like that. Some people like to do that and it is not a criticism of people who are forever on the literary festival circuit. That’s what they choose to do. I choose not to. Because then I’m easily bored.

RITUPARNA ROY: Outside of the subcontinent, which are the ones you really liked being a part of?

KUNAL BASU: Well, the Ubud Literary Festival in Bali — because the setting is so lovely. And also because Ubud is a contained area. So, you have the same sort of readers/audience migrating from session to session. So by the time you’ve done multiple sessions, you already know the people and become friends. Different festivals are known for different things — Ubud for creating the conditions for building a rapport between the audience and the author. There is no such possibility in Jaipur, which is the biggest tamasha in the world! That tamasha has its own excitement. It’s over-the-top, like we Indians are. It’s ruckus, it’s colourful, it’s outrageous. You can love it, you can hate it, you can criticise it, you can praise it. It’s not unidimensional. One day you can be completely turned off by JLF, and the day after, you may absolutely love it. So, JLF definitely is one of my favourites, Ubud definitely is a favourite. What else?

Among the smaller festivals, I actually quite liked the Patna festival. The reason I’ve like it is because I feel that literary festivals, particularly in the subcontinent, have an unnecessary bias towards English, you know. We are a country of amazing literature in the vernacular which, unquestionably, in terms of quality, as a whole, is superior to Indian Writing in English. There is no question about that. But there’s no reason to relegate that, or give it sort of a cursory mention or space in our literary festivals, which tends to happen in most literary festivals. Unfortunately. And it creates this unnecessary rift between people who write in English and people who write in the vernaculars. Really unnecessary.

RITUPARNA ROY: I think what should be encouraged is a dialogue between the two.

KUNAL BASU: It creates some challenges, you know — how to facilitate that dialogue, the language of the dialogue or the languages of the dialogue, the topics, the intersection points need to be carefully designed by festival directors. And Patna did it. Because it was not just Hindi and English, but it was all the sub-languages of Bihar. There were sessions in Maithili, in Bhojpuri… so you have journalists, people who are talking about the issues of the day, in society, there are many engagement points. It is small enough so that you actually get to know the people. Your co-speakers. People are relatively unselfish, so that once your session is over, you don’t run away. You go to other people’s sessions. Which is one of the banes of these high-profile literary festivals, which are a bit like fashion parades. So once you’ve done your fashion parade, you are away. It’s somebody else’s fashion parade next. Festivals like Edinburgh.

RITUPARNA ROY: You didn’t mention a single European one.

KUNAL BASU: I’ve read in most of them, but I’m not attracted to them.

RITUPARNA ROY: But Edinburgh I thought was an interesting one.

KUNAL BASU: I didn’t find it to be interesting at all. It may have been my particular experience. Because you know — you have a slot, you go to the author’s lounge, you are given a welcome drink, you are shepherded into your session, you do your session, you sign your books, and then you are out. It’s like a meat market. And the next set of authors are in. You don’t stick around, you don’t mingle, you don’t chat, you don’t have a drink, you don’t talk to readers, the questions don’t challenge you. There’s no excitement. It’s a well-orchestrated series of shows.

The arts is the world of chaos. There needs to be some disorder. Often times we complain, “Why didn’t that session finish on time?” Thank God it doesn’t finish on time. There needs to be a bit of this unruliness, this messiness, around the arts. At least the presentation of the arts. Which I don’t find in these very well-crafted, very polite festivals. At least they don’t get me excited.

RITUPARNA ROY: The internet has changed the face of publishing. Has it changed the culture of reading?

KUNAL BASU: Honestly, I don’t know the full answer to that question, because this is not something I’ve investigated in detail — the sociological phenomenon you’re referring to. And it requires careful investigation, and I don’t certainly want to shoot my mouth not knowing all the dimensions of the challenge. You know, I hear different things from different people. So bookshop owners will say that readership is migrating to e-channels only for bestsellers and big-name books. Which don’t require browsing. So you want to buy a Dan Brown book? Go into Amazon or Flipkart which will give you a cheaper deal than going to a bookshop. OK? But if you want to buy literary fiction, would want to go turn a few pages, sit down…

RITUPARNA ROY: Not just literary fiction — if you want to discover an author for yourself — the way you can browse through books in a bookshop…

KUNAL BASU: If you are a new author, if you write literary fiction — then your e-retail intake would be not that high, unless you are writing blockbusters. So again, there are different sub-categories. My suspicion is that there are many sub-categories of books. Books are not just not books, you know. There are cook books and there is John Coetzee. What I hope is not going to happen is that the electronic devices like tabs, phones, etc. create a great sense and a great attraction for immediacy. Literary fiction, which is the waters that I swim in, doesn’t always provide you with an immediacy. Often times, there are slow burners. And so, sometimes people may read just three pages on their tablets and say, “No, I don’t want to read this.” But if you have invested and bought a book, and it’s sitting in front of you… you see, it’s easy to switch off something on a device, but it’s more difficult to pick up a book and throw it into the garbage can and say, “I don’t want to read it”. It’s there. Whether you like it or not, it calls you back. So, for literary fiction, I think, the physical book would be more helpful, more beneficial.

RITUPARNA ROY: I find that the people who used to read still read…

KUNAL BASU: But are new readers being attracted? That’s the question, you see. Because those who exist and read will gradually die off. So, the question is, are you also attracting new readers into the world of literary fiction? Commissioning editors in the West would say, “No we aren’t”. And that’s one of the challenges.

Commercial fiction has a brighter future. Increasingly, I’m given to understand that publishers, and more their marketing people, are wont to say: “Is this book, is this theme, are these kinds of characters attractive to readers?” On that basis, how would you sell Crime and Punishment? It would be very hard to sell Crime and Punishment. There’s a question mark, there’s a doubt as to what sort of future are we going to encounter 50 years from now, with respect to literary fiction? Will there still be a genre called LF which will need a mass market? Where everything should happen on page 1 or page 2 at the very latest. The hook, as it were. Now what is the hook of Anna Karenina? I don’t know. After you’ve read the 1st 100 pages, you have a sense… But I’m an optimist. Despite all the upheavals, the book industry will remain. And the best thing is, it’ll probably remain as long as I’m alive, because I don’t have an entire lifetime to live.

RITUPARNA ROY: Social media is now impossible to ignore. Facebook, Twitter — they are very useful tools in promoting a book. In your experience — your journey from The Opium Clerk to Kalkatta — till The Racists, your third novel, the print media and television was all you had. Your website happened after The Japanese Wife — so you could promote it there too. The Yellow Emperor’s Cure had the online advantage more than any of your previous books. And now with Kalkatta, you also have a great book-trailer. So, you have really experienced the change over the last decade. What do you think has been the effect of social media on readership?

KUNAL BASU: There must be many. But the one thing which has been quite significant is to reduce the value of reviews. Why is that? This is not simply literary reviews, but also reviews of products. You see, previously, appraisal was the exclusive domain of experts. Or those we called experts. So, it has its pluses, it has its minuses. An expert — a literary critic, who is an employee of a newspaper, not somebody who does freelance, but has been doing it for years as a career — will presumably spend more time, will be more considerate, more thorough, in his job of doing a review. He won’t be cursory. At the same time, the flip side of it is that it is an individual’s opinion. A piece of literary fiction is not mathematics. You cannot prove that what you’ve done is right, neither can anybody say it is wrong. It’s a matter of taste. Now, in the old days, the taste of those few gatekeepers would determine whether a book is considered to be worthwhile or worthless. And that would have a significant impact on readers, who would read and say that “Well, if The Guardian is saying it is not such a good book, why spend 15 pounds and buy it?” Now, if you are on the positive side of the reviews, you would say, “That’s great. The people of erudition are liking my work.” But if you are at the receiving end, then you’ll say, “Who the hell are these few people to decide what my book is about?” What social media has done is I think democratisation of opinion. And in democratisation of opinion, there’ll be thoughts that you’ll say, “Aah, this is outlandish.” Like in life. If you walk around in the streets and everybody is allowed to express their opinion, some will use loose words, some will use reasoned words. But what has happened in social media is… somebody might say, “A review has panned it, so what? I loved it.” And then 25 people might say, “Yes, I loved it too.” Or if the reviewers are sort of fabricating praise — which can often happen, which can happen. Sometimes authors who are very well-known can write very mediocre works and can still be praised to high heavens. It happens everywhere. And somebody in social media can say, “But why is he receiving so much praise? I didn’t find it so great.” So there is much more opinion floating around. When that happens, then you the reader can pick and choose which one you want to give credence to. I, as a person… it’s not that I don’t like reviews. Everybody likes reviews. Somerset Maugham had this famous line: “People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.” And I’m no exception to that! Again, given my background, I’ve always been suspicious of exclusivity. People who say that “She or he is an expert — they know”, always gets my back up to say — “Oh really?”

RITUPARNA ROY: Does active promotion of a book on social media translate into increased sales?

KUNAL BASU: No. Not even a good review translates to better sales. Ultimately, at least for literary fiction, it is word of mouth.

RITUPARNA ROY: If you’ve loved a book, you’ll recommend it to others.

KUNAL BASU: Yes. If it’s published by a small publisher and it doesn’t get the hoopla, etc., it might still eventually filter in. But remember, I’m using the word “might”, “it might happen”….

RITUPARNA ROY: My fear is about new writers — that in this craze about big publishers and big names and big advances, new voices might just get lost.

KUNAL BASU: Absolutely. But look, social media is actually creating possibilities that it may not get lost.

RITUPARNA ROY: But it has also created the possibility that everybody is a writer, photographer, filmmaker….

KUNAL BASU: Which is fine. I don’t have a problem with that, you see. If everybody believes that there is an artistic gene in them, so be it. As a practitioner of the arts, I should feel encouraged by that. I don’t have a problem with that. Not all works are up to great standards and great quality. So what? But if everybody in the world wants to write a novel, great! Which means we are not fighting with each other, right? Because we are writing novels.

But the bigger question is, are we killing fewer Van Gogh’s today than in Van Gogh’s time? The question is, with all the information, social media, connectivity, networking… which is great — are we actually creating conditions where the world does not ignore those who shouldn’t be ignored?

RITUPARNA ROY: Book-trailers are the latest “in-thing” in publishing. I saw the book-trailer of Kalkatta — Pinaki has done a wonderful job of it, in addition to the stunning book cover. I really liked it; and it did increase my interest in the book, I must say. But it also made me sad. I’ll tell you why.

Increasingly, I see that authors, very often, don’t get a general public recognition unless a book of theirs is adapted on screen. And if it so happens, they are ever after mostly referred by the book that has been filmed. It is almost as if, cinema now validates literature. It doesn’t seem to have a value of its own. And for me, the book-trailer is a kind of testament to the diminishing value of the written word, and the kind of losing battle that it is fighting with the image. As a practitioner of the written word, how do you feel about it?

KUNAL BASU: See, I’ve mixed loyalties. I love cinema. As you know, I’ve a very small and chequered career in cinema. More importantly, I’m incredibly image-oriented. Imagery is the primary weaponry in my writing. So, I always say that I have to see it in order to write it. I can’t just conceptualise and write it. I have to see it happening in front of my eyes. I have to imagine it. Then I would write it, with the eye of a director… a director’s eye for detail is what I hope to bring in my writing. So I’ve mixed loyalties. I love theatre, I love

cinema…

RITUPARNA ROY: Imagery obviously has always been an important part of writing, any kind of writing in fact. And I’m personally drawn to writers like that. But what I’m trying to stress is the role of the imagination. When you read, you need to imagine it also…

KUNAL BASU: Right. So the first element is — personally, how do I feel about it? Actually, I’m not hung up. If somebody wants to perform a tableau in the middle of Gariahat, and say, well this is what Kalkatta is about, I won’t mind it. I’m less parochial. I’m less about boundaries. I’m saying, look actually, you know, I could also become a theatre actor if I imagine my life like that etc. And I think it is a confluence of these different media that actually heightens a particular kind of an experience. I’ve no problems with that.

To the larger question of social status and social value ascribed to a particular form of art — which in this case is cinema, the youngest of the arts — what you are saying is unquestionably true. Unquestionably. Look, till about the middle 20th century, the novel was the youngest of the arts. And being the youngest, it was the most favourite.

RITUPARNA ROY: But it’s also because it was loose. You could do many things with it.

KUNAL BASU: Cinema is the youngest kid on the block. Everybody is sort of drawn into cinema and attracted by it. You don’t have to surf for examples. Open the newspapers. If there was no cinema, we literary fiction writers would have a field day. They have to flip pages, right? They would flip pages with what? With books perhaps. And there is of course music to contend with all the time — and the performing arts. I don’t see cinema as a major competitor to the written word. But I do see its enhanced social status is something which can create conditions which suppresses or pushes aside significant contribution of the other arts. Of sibling arts. If one sibling is the loved one, then others might be neglected. What’s a good example of that? If you go to literary festivals these days, in South Asia — where we are obsessed with cinema — you’ll hardly find a single literary festival which does not have, among its prominent invitees, a film personality.

RITUPARNA ROY: I remember this Kolkata Literary Meet event — where you were in a panel with Aparna Sen, Javed Akhtar, and Sharmila Tagore, and there was this one line you said… something to the effect of… “Let’s remember this is a literary festival…”. It was only an aside, but it was an important aside — that literary festivals are also about films these days.

KUNAL BASU: Look, it’s not simply about organisers. I once said in one of the literary festivals in Kolkata…. There was a session with a film personality before. After the session ended, the room drained out. I said to those who remained, “Congratulations!” It is true. But go to a film festival — how many authors are invited to film festivals?

RITUPARNA ROY: That’s exactly what I was saying. It is undeniable, but I feel sad about it.

KUNAL BASU: So there could be a neglect of siblings. That could be there. Now, the more challenging thing in this relationship is this: what if cinema becomes a new novel? I was at a literary festival in Perth where there was a film director… I forget his name… who did The Sopranos in HBO, saying, that not the 3-hour, 2-hour film… but what if… now HBO has these paid subscription for a 10-part, 15-part series — which provide all the opportunities for character development, nuance, relationship…

RITUPARNA ROY: And a lot of people prefer the TV series to the cinema…

KUNAL BASU: What if they prefer it to novels? Because isn’t from a reader’s point of view, or a recipient’s point of view…. We think the recipient is receiving words, or the recipient is receiving images — but the recipient is actually receiving an experience. So, what if that experience is fulfilled by the mini-series? Well-done literary mini-series? Then, would the novel fundamentally decline in value? That’s the fear. That’s the apprehension.

The mention about laziness is absolutely true. Can a very powerful imagery-based writer actually compete with films? Because in films, the role of the viewer’s imagination is much reduced.

RITUPARNA ROY: Publishing in India is “like a child which has learnt to crawl”, you’d told me in a 2008 interview (after the publication of The Japanese Wife). “It is far more enthusiastic and experimental than publishing in the West, which has grown rather jaded and is risk-averse”. Has Indian publishing continued in that growth curve, especially in relation to fiction?

KUNAL BASU: I continue to grow in optimism when it comes to publishing in India. For a number of reasons. One is, our markets are huge, much bigger than that of US or the UK. The US market is big also, but not as much as India, if you put all the segments together. And there is still a lot of excitement round books — despite all that we’ve spoken about so far, there’s still a lot of excitement round books. We are still a reading culture. I’m perennially surprised… honestly, I’m perennially surprised when somebody on a street asks me: “Aren’t you Kunal Basu, the author?” This will never happen to me anywhere in the world. And not simply me. It would not happen to an American, a British, or a French author, or even people who have won Nobel prizes. If Coetzee walks down Oxford — as he has many times — nobody would recognise him.

RITUPARNA ROY: Not even in Oxford? I’m surprised by this.

KUNAL BASU: No, very few people would recognise him. But if there was an English Premier League football star…

RITUPARNA ROY: Everybody would crowd around him and take selfies!

KUNAL BASU: Sunil Ganguly, when he walked into a fish market in Kolkata, would be mobbed! I’m a small fry compared to him. So I think, there is still a romance with books.

RITUPARNA ROY: You’ve changed publishers several times. Like many authors. Have you found your ideal publisher in Pan Macmillan?

KUNAL BASU: There is nothing called an ideal publisher.

RITUPARNA ROY: Did you have an image in your mind?

KUNAL BASU: No, I’m realistic. Look, in the ’50s and the ’60s, people would talk about the bond between Guillaume Apollinaire and Albert Camus. They were friends. But that’s gone. The world is far more transactional in every domain — not just in writing — than relationship-based. People used to enter a job and retire in that job. They don’t anymore. Right. It’s a transactional world. Even within the transaction, there can be genuine politeness, there can be some friendships and things like that. But do I have the vision of an ideal publisher who stands by me in my bad days? No, that world has changed. It’s not simply in publishing. That world in general has changed.

As a child actor with Sabitri Chatterjee in a still from Mrinal Sen’s Abosheshe

Section IV: The Sibling Arts

RITUPARNA ROY: You’ve dedicated this book to your late friend, Abhiit Gupta, who was an artist. You yourself painted once, but at one point “left the brush for the pen”. I’m not going to ask you why you did it, but what I’m more interested in is: what do you think you would have lost, as a writer, if you didn’t have that deep engagement with painting?

KUNAL BASU: I would not have been able to be a writer. You see, again, I think writing or painting etc. is a manifestation of a certain desire, a certain way of seeing the world and engaging with it. And my engagement with this world is through all my senses, and my primal instinct is that of an artist. Which I was when I was very young. I was a very naughty boy and my parents had a very hard time getting me to do anything or keeping me still. But the best way that worked for them was, they would put a piece of paper in front of me and some crayons, and then I would be a very calm person. A very calm young boy. And that’s what I truly loved. That’s what I truly wanted to be.

RITUPARNA ROY: And you did water colours or oil?

KUNAL BASU: I did water colours, oil-pastel, oil-charcoal. I did no sculpture.

RITUPARNA ROY: Were you trained in it ever?

KUNAL BASU: I went to two art schools — two different places. I had a group show with others when I was very young — I think when I was about 11. My parents were very enthusiastic about my art. Due to a whole series of foolish decisions, which I’ll not irritate myself with now, I moved away from being an artist. But the way I saw the world… my primal instinct was the instinct of art. And I think somehow that didn’t quite get lost and it made its way felt. It sort of got lost in the bloodstream and then came out and manifested itself through my writing.

RITUPARNA ROY: And The Miniaturist was also the first book you wrote, though The Opium Clerk came out first?

KUNAL BASU: No, The Opium Clerk was my first book.

RITUPARNA ROY: But would it have been possible for you to write The Miniaturist then? Because it is not so much a novel as a series of paintings.

KUNAL BASU: I’d like to think it is a novel written as a series of paintings.

RITUPARNA ROY: No, what I mean is — the way you describe paintings there…. the kind of series of paintings that we get in the novel… even My Name Is Red doesn’t have that. So The Miniaturist is very unique that way. While reading it, I felt that it’s only an artist who can write this. Obviously, a great novelist can probably write anything he wants to, but you know, what you’ve done in The Miniaturist… I still think a painter’s imagination is required to do that, and not just a practitioner of words.

KUNAL BASU: I think most artists want to try different media. So The Miniaturist is written, is certainly written… the relevant analogy would be, it is painted in water colour on tempera — so there is some opaqueness, but not a lot of opaqueness. There is obviously a lot of symmetry, which is one of the hallmarks of miniature painting. Kalkatta, I would like to believe, also has the artist’s imagination. But it is a different sort of imagination, requiring a different sort of artistic media. Because I think that is my primal instinct. I’m not a huge psychologist, so I don’t want to make too much of it. But I think that is what I’m driven by.

RITUPARNA ROY: This is your own specific experience. But I had another question, which is a more generic one — What do you think the visual arts, like painting, bring to literature? Obviously, it enriches. But how do you think it does? And I’m not talking about just your experience here or talking about books which are about painting.

KUNAL BASU: There are some people who listen to music when they write. Ernest Hemingway wrote, if I’m not mistaken, in The Moveable Feast, that when he was in Paris and financially in dire straits, he would go to the Louvre and walk around. And he said, “You know, if these are great paintings, they should make me forget my hunger”. I don’t know whether they did or not…!

RITUPARNA ROY: I take it that the entrance fee was very minimal then, or non-existent, because now it will only increase his hunger actually…!

KUNAL BASU: Yes, you are right! See, it is very hard to generalise how it is for a practitioner…

RITUPARNA ROY: Just another kind of inspiration for some people…

KUNAL BASU: Yes, it’s another kind of inspiration. It’s a different window towards looking at life.

RITUPARNA ROY: Most people don’t know this — that you were a professional theatre actor once, associated with Utpal Dutt’s People’s Little Theatre (PLT) in Kolkata. And later also in Montreal, as a young academic. And I’ve had it from the best of sources that you were a good actor — your wife, Susmita, told me that once.

KUNAL BASU: She would, wouldn’t she?

RITUPARNA ROY: No, I’m not so convinced. I think that’s a huge compliment coming from a spouse. Well, I would like you to share with the readers of The Byword your experience of theatre. Why were you drawn to it? What are the plays you acted in? Why you left? And also the differences of your experience in Kolkata and Montreal?

KUNAL BASU: Theatre provided me with a great high. In many ways, it was the biggest high. In cinema, you have to wait between shots, endlessly. And the continuity is inside your head. Only. Whereas in theatre, everything is happening right there. You can’t miss your cue. The audience is live and the reaction is instantaneous. It is a fabulous high. I was initiated into theatre very early because my mother was a stage actress, in part. She acted with Ritwik Kumar Ghatak in the IPTA.

So, the world of theatre was very alive in our house — with theatre actors and directors visiting often times, having great conversations, debates and things like that. And of course, I grew up in the ’70s when Kolkata was really the world’s capital for theatre, you know, with groups like Bohurupee, PLT, Nandikar, Theatre Workshop, Chetana. So, I was very fortunate to have been exposed to all this fascinating theatre. My stage experience in Kolkata was in Jadavpur University, primarily. Both acting and directing. And then, briefly, at PLT. I wish it could have been longer, but it was not long because I thereafter went off to the US. In Montreal, it was with a theatre company called Serai.

RITUPARNA ROY: I would just like to know a little more about your association with Utpal Dutt.

KUNAL BASU: He was a larger-than-life character. It would almost take up two interviews to talk about Utpal Dutt! I was absolutely in admiration of him, as I’m sure many others were too. Admiration of not simply him as a director and an actor, but the absolute breadth of perspectives and insights that he brought from the world of the arts, the world of politics, of history, and diverse civilisations. Going for a rehearsal to his house in Tollygunge — Ajadgarh — was almost like having a tutorial. I miss him. Miss him terribly. Untimely death. We were very afraid of him…

RITUPARNA ROY: He was a hard taskmaster when it came to direction?

KUNAL BASU: Absolutely. Unquestionably so.

RITUPARNA ROY: And what was the production you did with him?

KUNAL BASU: I worked in a production that was not even completed. My part was not even completed…

RITUPARNA ROY: What I find remarkable about his acting persona is the Utpal Dutt of PLT and the comedian of Hindi cinema.

KUNAL BASU: See the range?

RITUPARNA ROY: Yes, the range… that is range in an actor. Most Indians know only about the Hindi comedies…

KUNAL BASU: Exactly. You know, in Samaresh Basu, I see this range: the person who has written Ganga has written Amrita Kumbher Sandhane and has also written Bibar — so when people say to me: ‘You are a writer of historical fiction… and you’ve written a contemporary novel’… I mean, c’mon, it has been done many, many times before me… many, many times before me. By lots of different people.

RITUPARNA ROY: You just don’t know them…

KUNAL BASU: Yes, you just don’t know them.

RITUPARNA ROY: You were talking about Montreal…

KUNAL BASU: In Montreal, it was in a company called Serai, and I did a play called Baba Jacques Das and turmoil at Cote des Niges Cemetery. I played the lead character, not Baba Jacques Das. And strangely enough, it was the story of an aspiring author who’s experiencing writer’s block. Who is an NRI born and raised outside of India. Raised by parents who gave no advice, did not familiarise their child with India at all. So, he is India ignorant. Written by a person called Rana Bose. A very fine play. Directed by him as well. So this guy leads a bit of an experimental lifestyle, lives with his girlfriend, wants to write but has a writer’s block, doesn’t know anything about India, feels estranged in North America, goes and hangs out in a cemetery smoking some dope, and there he encounters a ’60s hippie. He is a French guy who calls himself Baba Jacques Das. Because in the ’60s, many of these people had come to India, become hippies, embraced Hinduism, gone back and became sort of pop cult leaders. And strangely enough, what his parents had failed to impart to him, Baba Jacques Das gives him — a flavour of India. I’ve forgotten the rest of the play.

RITUPARNA ROY: So what were the differences in your theatre experience in Kolkata and Montreal? Except that you were more mature in years when you were in Montreal, whereas you had more time in your hands as a student in Kolkata, I guess….

KUNAL BASU: Perhaps not. The reason I, again foolishly, did not stick to theatre was, I was doing too many things. Which was the story of my life up until a certain point, before I hit writing. Then everything stopped. I was in politics, I was still a student, I was also in theatre, I was interested in cinema, I was having a couple of affairs on the side... so it was an incredibly hard life to manage! Incredibly hard life to manage!! By the time I was in Montreal, I was married with a child, life was sedate, I had a full-time job and I was acting on stage. But I actually did find that as much as I loved acting, and I still do, I think the urge to become a writer gradually manifested itself when I was in Montreal. I mean I always wanted to be — but in Montreal, it became real. And that’s where I wrote The Opium Clerk.

RITUPARNA ROY: You’ve had a long engagement with cinema. As a child actor, you acted in two of Mrinal Sen’s films — Punashcha and Abasheshe. And then as an academic, you wrote and directed two documentaries — one on football and the other on the Baluchuri saree. Years later, a story of yours was adapted for the screen by Aparna Sen. And beginning with that film, The Japanese Wife, you have done cameos in a number of recent Bengali films — in Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s Antaheen and Goutam Ghosh’s Shunyo Awnko. What was it like to work with such ace directors — as a child, and then decades later, as an author?

KUNAL BASU: I haven’t had really the kind of intense engagement that an actor has with a director, because when I was young, the experience wasn’t all that meaningful, although my roles were more extended then as a child actor. And later they were cameos. So I’ve never really had that kind of a strong engagement as an actor.

RITUPARNA ROY: And Mrinal Sen was not Mrinal Sen for you, but Mrinal kaka. So you wouldn’t have probably understood what his greatness was.

KUNAL BASU: Yes, I was too young then. I worked with Sabitri Chattopadhyay. With Soumitra Chattopadhyay. I was telling Soumitrada the other day… I remember…. Again, I was a very naughty boy and I would run away during the shooting. Hide under a sofa in these big sets in Tollygunge. So once the shot was ready, suddenly Kunal would be missing! I can imagine now how nightmarish it must have been for the director and the production team! I also loved cricket. So Mrinal Kaka created fictitious names for all of us. He said he is Jaisimha, the opening batsman; his assistant, Indore Sen, was Chandu Borde; I was Abbas Ali Begh, the man with a lot of flair! And so he would tell me, “Look, we can get out easily. So you must be here — because if we get out, you have to bat.”

RITUPARNA ROY: So that was the way to bring you back…

KUNAL BASU: That was the way to bring me back to the set. One day, I saw… it was dark inside the studio, and I saw a man walk in with a black suit and a tie and a white shirt. The most amazingly handsome man I have met in my life. And he came in and Mrinal kaka introduced me to him and said, this is the Nawab of Pataudi. But it was Soumitra Chattopadhyay! Everybody had a cricket name, right? And of course Soumitra Chattopadhyay was infinitely more handsome than the Nawab of Pataudi. I told this story to Soumitrada just the other day….

RITUPARNA ROY: There is a beautiful picture of you and Sabitri in your website. Which film was it? The same as Soumitra’s?

KUNAL BASU: With Soumitra, it was Punascha; and with Sabitri, it was Abasheshe. Both films are lost by the way… I keep asking Mrinal Kaka every time and he sort of throws a fit and says, “Nobody has preserved my films.”

RITUPARNA ROY: I thought his son Kunal has…

KUNAL BASU: Kunal doesn’t have them. Are they anywhere in Doordarshan’s records or archives… don’t know…

RITUPARNA ROY: FTII?

KUNAL BASU: I don’t know. I haven’t been able to track down, and I would offer a big bounty to anybody who is able to track them down. You see, because my wife and daughter don’t believe this. They think this is another of the fictions that I have created, you know.

RITUPARNA ROY: So you enjoyed doing the recent cameos?

KUNAL BASU: Yes, absolutely.

RITUPARNA ROY: Is it a kind of breather from your writing?

KUNAL BASU: Writing is not oppressing that I need to take a breather. That’s all I want to do.

RITUPARNA ROY: So they approached you because they know you well, right?

KUNAL BASU: I guess so. I can’t say that I stood in a casting line and won the role over others. But I will tell you this — I played Kunal Basu in Antaheen. Which was kind of cute. It’s great fun. I love cinema.

RITUPARNA ROY: I wanted to ask you this before. We have had great filmmakers here who have done very memorable films on Kolkata. The most well-known among them are the “Calcutta trilogy” of both Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen — which include Ray’s Pratidwandi (1970), Seemabaddha (1971) and Jana Aranya (1975); and Sen’s Interview (1971), Calcutta ’71 (1972), and Padatik (1973)…

KUNAL BASU: I love Mrinal Sen’s Interview, and I remember having written a long film review of Ray’s Jana Aranya when I was in college...

RITUPARNA ROY: What do you think was the chief difference between Ray and Sen in the depiction of Calcutta?

KUNAL BASU: Look, volumes have been written about the differences between the two. Their sensibilities are very different, although their palette — the palette of the city — is the same. Mrinal Sen is probably closer to the lower middle class, the grime of life, than Satyajit Ray. But in many ways, this is perhaps a gross classification. The key difference is that Mrinal Sen’s films have more of an expressed ideology than Satyajit Ray. When we were in college, we used to agitate a lot about this — who is more progressive, who is less progressive. I’ve come to realise over a number of years is that this is actually a sophomoric conversation. Because both were intensely political. How could they not be in seeing the world around them? But their modus operandi was different. And both in some ways, the combination of great filmmakers like Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, and Ritwik Ghatak — the combined effect of these three is probably more than the effect of any one of them. Nobody has made this point, I’m making this point. Because the combined effect was creating the kind of taste for Bengali cinema which lasts even today. What we prize as good cinema, our taste in cinema, is a combination of the net result of these three, and that has been more than the contribution of any one of them.

RITUPARNA ROY: I would like to end this interview with your comments and observations about the Bengali film industry now, which is undergoing resurgence. Do you think so? You have many friends in the industry. How do you see the scene now?

KUNAL BASU: Compared to the ’80s and the ’90s, when it was completely dormant, when you wouldn’t want to go to a movie hall and watch a bangla chhobi.

RITUPARNA ROY: The options were — either an Aparna Sen/Rituporno Ghosh film, or potboilers like Baba Keno Chakar, Swami Keno Ashami, Beder Meye Jyotsna. Those were the two poles, there was nothing in between…

KUNAL BASU: Obviously, hundreds of flowers are blooming now. And as you would find, in situations like these, some of that stuff is actually derivative, not very interesting, is slapdash, is put together without a lot of thought, and repetitive — but you’d equally find work which is trying to break

new ground.

RITUPARNA ROY: So, this too gives you hope. Like publishing in India?

KUNAL BASU: I am a hopeful kind of person. How could I not be? Because actually I have to get up and write another novel tomorrow. So if it’s doom and gloom for me, then I wouldn’t bother getting up.

RITUPARNA ROY: Thank you very much for this very extensive interview.

KUNAL BASU: Thank you.

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Kolkata grabbed me in my innards: Kunal Basu

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