The unlikely romance of The Japanese Wife has made it to celluloid, but it is history, and stories around history that really excites Kunal Basu.
It is not peak summer yet, but the mid-morning sun is already uncomfortable. The flowers in the Lodhi Garden lawns are wilting, but dressed in a full-sleeved black linen shirt and blue jeans, Kunal Basu shows no obvious sign of discomfort. With The Japanese Wife, Aparna Sen’s film based on his short story, releasing next week, this is Basu’s moment in the sun.
Of course, with four well-received books in the last seven years, Basu is no stranger to public interest — his website, remarkably easy to negotiate and comprehensive, proof of the many queries his agent gets from journalists for “photographs, reviews, quotes, etc.” But the film adaptation has fuelled interest in The Japanese Wife, taking it and Basu to an audience, in India at least, far wider than that which reads English language fiction.
Lodhi Gardens is a favourite haunt, and for someone who’s lived abroad for 32 years now — Basu left India in 1978 to study in the US, taught there and in Canada for many years and now lives in Oxford, where he teaches marketing at the Said Business School — he is remarkably familiar with its 15th-century ruins. “This used to be a serai,” he points to the Bara Gumbad that we’ve decided will be the venue for the interview. “You can sense a whole lot of weary men and their animals who’ve crossed the Khyber Pass and come through the hot scorching desert to finally find a resting place.”
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