‘MY LITERARY BILINGUALISM IS A GIFT OF INDIA’

Author Kunal Basu on why he chooses to write in Bengali sometimes and his association with his muse — the city of Kolkata

For an author who’s written almost a dozen novels, Kunal Basu’s works are enviably varied. When his first work of fiction — The Opium Clerk — released in 2001, he had opened up the world of opium trade in China, which the British invested in heavily. His contemporary, Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace had just released and these two Bengali writers were rightfully considered the authors to watch out for. Now, almost 20 years later, his sixth work of fiction, Sarojini’s Mother, has hit the stands. A young woman who sets out in search of her biological mother makes for the crux of the story. Excerpts from an interview.

Can you take us through the research process that was required to write Sarojini’s Mother?

Given the strange circumstance of having to choose between two women, who could likely be her mother, Sarojini has no option but to proceed towards a DNA test for maternity. My research for this novel took me to advanced laboratories to meet scientists and educate myself about the theory and practice of such a test. Not only is a DNA test a highly complex subject, it’s execution calls for great skill, and researching the process made me doubly respectful of the advances in the biological science.

Your novel pans out in Kolkata. You do have an interesting association with the city…

I was born and raised in Kolkata, but like all metropolises, it is a multifaceted city which surprises even a veteran. Each novel that I have set in this city has revealed to me an aspect of it that I couldn’t even conceive of earlier. Like the secret world of gigolos that I wrote about in my previous novel, Kalkatta. Or the subculture of Western pop music, that runs in the vein of the city, in my latest. Writing about Kolkata is an adventure that I cherish.

Itt seems that the city has something to offer you every time you land on its shores...

I am in Kolkata for five months a year, and I’m almost a parttime resident. But the city never disappoints me, throwing up novelties during every exploration. Not simply uncharted neighbourhoods, but also personalities that tumble out of a cabinet of curiosities. Like a group of friends who read dictionaries as a hobby, or a man who forges passports for a living but sees himself as an upright citizen. The city is full of quirky writers and revolutionaries, who dream impossible dreams and, at least, one man who still believes that the sun orbits the earth!

Many consider Bombay to be a completely different city from Mumbai, do you feel it’s the same for Calcutta and Kolkata as well?

Certainly, there are differences between the upper class, Anglophile Calcutta and the largely middle-class Kolkata, but the distinction is not very pronounced in daily life. Sadly, the domain where the divergence is increasingly pronounced is that of reading and writing books. The city appears to have abandoned its cosmopolitan culture and shrunk into ghettos of disparate cultural spaces. There are those who only read English books and attend literary festivals, unaware of Bengal’s rich, cultural heritage. The Bengali intelligentsia, too, seems to have turned its face away from the rest of the country and the world.

Since you spend a lot of time outside the country, what do you make of the literary scene in India?

It is both thriving, at one level, and stagnating at another.

There seems to be a lot going on, especially in terms of literary events. But at the same time, there is a tendency to sink into one’s own limited milieu without an urge to explore matters that are outside of one’s comfort zone.

Though some feel that people don’t read as much as they did before, a number of youngsters fill literature festivals across the country. Do you feel alternate modes of entertainment have added to the rise of disinterest among readers?

Attendance is surely up, but these festivals are also becoming zones of social mixing rather than literary engagement. Certainly, the meteoric rise of audio-visual entertainment has cut into readership, reducing attention span and fostering a culture of instant gratification. Appreciating a book, especially a literary work, might require investing an hour to properly grasp the narrative, whereas a web series would land the viewer straightaway into the plot.

You’re one of the few novelists who write in Bengali too. Can you talk a bit about that? How do you decide when to write a novel in Bengali?

I am fortunate to have grown up in a family and at a time when I didn’t have to choose between English and Bengali. Both literary streams ran concurrently within me. I didn’t have to abandon Bankim Chandra (Chatterjee) to read (Charles) Dickens, and vice versa. My literary bilingualism is a gift of India, which has made me open to multiple linguistic experiences. A story — its world and characters — suggests the language I’d write it in. It is an instinctive decision.

In an interview, you’d quoted a professor you’d met who had said, “Bengali writers of the ’40s were perhaps more adventurous than contemporary writers in English”. Has there been a conscious effort on your part to be as adventurous as them, in your later works?

I have been “adventurous” from the early days of my writing. I am fascinated by strangeness, by worlds that I am unfamiliar with. Exploring these sustains my joy of writing. I am happy to ride the wings of imagination and go wherever my stories take me, be it the 19th century opium trade or modern day piracy off the African coast.