Kolkata :

You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave. For author KunalBasu, Kolkata is twilight zone. A city of Bengalis, you say? Less than 50% if you look at the population, points out the Oxford academician. Basu, whose short story collection ‘The Japanese Wife’ was adapted for the screen by Aparna Sen, is in town, taking a break three weeks after finishing his latest novel. He has turned down six invitations to attend literary festivals across the world, so guarded he is about his newborn. But TOI on Friday caught up with him at his 29th floor apartment and got a birds-eye view of the story.

“This will ruffle feathers,” the author warns. “But if it doesn’t, I’ll consider the novel to be a failure,” he concedes. Basu’s latest is a no-nonsense account of Kolkata seen through the eyes of a migrant gigolo. The plot touches upon the 2011 Bengal election, intellectuals switching sides at the drop of a hat, Kolkata as a terror transit point, rigging and more – but don’t expect the good old Park Street days with a sepia tint, or nostalgia about Tagore, Ray and Ravi Shankar. Instead, be prepared for a stinging study on the “highly educated Bengali intellectual class”.

Like a pucca Kolkatan, Basu loves the city as much as he despises it. “Some authors write books on Kolkata with detachment. I have held nothing back. When people think of Kolkata, they think of a city of Bengalis. But the city has less than 50% Bengali population. While writing, we screen out the majority, in that case. Of that Bengali population, we only consider the ‘intellectuals’. That is a niche. My story is how a Bihari Muslim struggles to survive here and how the two worlds collide,” he narrates.

But how does the 2011 assembly polls and rigging feature in the plot? “That election ushered in the much-touted ‘poriborton’. This transformation deeply affects all citizens, as no Kolkatan can live oblivious to the political environment. It so happens that on the day of the poll verdict, May 13, a cataclysmic event changes the protagonist’s life,” the author says.

He hasn’t demonized anyone in the novel, he clarifies. “Many writers make Indians look like fools. I have the good, bad and ugly in the story but I haven’t denied them their humanity. Most Western writers portray Indian cities based on stereotypes. I’m an insider, a thoroughbred Kolkatan. My grandfather Bhupendra Nath Bose has an avenue named after him. He was the first president of Mohun Bagan club and a vice-chancellor of Calcutta University,” says Basu, who taught at Jadavpur University and IIM-Calcutta.

But why a gigolo as the protagonist, one would ask. “I never dreamed that I’d write about male sex workers. Gigolos look at Kolkata through a different lens. Even those born and brought up in the city go to places unknown to masses. They meet people and see sides and shades of the city not seen by us. The protagonist is a Bihari Muslim, whose family migrated from Bangladesh. The plot follows how he negotiates the currents of contemporary complexities,” he explains. And why not. In Suketu Mehta’s ‘Maximum City’, bar dancers play a pivotal role, while it’s the same with transgenders, or ‘hijras’, in William Dalrymple’s ‘City of Djinns’.

The book will hit the stands later next year, published by Pan Macmillan in India. But many readers would be angry, he predicts. “Like Syed Muztaba Ali and Nirad C Chaudhuri’s works, there are several observations about this breed called ‘highly educated intellectual Bengali’. For example, a Bengali friend advices the protagonist that to be a ‘Kalkattan’, one must presume to know everything and accept gossip as the truth without verification,” he says, tongue firmly in cheek.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Kolkata / by Shounak Ghosal, TNN / September 14th, 2014