Daijiworld Media Network - Mangaluru (JS)
With Inputs from Media Release

Mangaluru, Feb 24: Renowned author Dr Kunal Basu on Wednesday February 24 said that India was a 'strange country where tolerance and intolerance go together', and if there 'world cups' on tolerance and intolerance, India would win both.

He was speaking during an interaction with the media prior to the national seminar on "Dislocation, Identities, Multiculturism and Diaspora" organised by the postgraduate department of English, St Aloysius College here.

Author of five novels including Kalkatta (2015), Dr Kunal Basu is a university reader in marketing at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford and a fellow of Green-Templeton College. Prior to Oxford, he was associate professor of Marketing at McGill University, Canada. A PhD from the University of Florida, Dr Basu has published extensively on corporate social responsibility, international marketing, branding strategy, and consumer decision making. Over the past twenty years, Dr Basu has been involved in management education in sixteen countries.

Excerpts of the interaction:

What drove you to take up the subject of male prostitutes in your novel 'Kalkatta'?

"I do not have a car in Kolkata, I travel by taxi or walk wherever possible. Very late night when I walk on some streets in Kolkata, I noticed these young men sitting on motorcycles and waiting. There were questions in my mind who these young men were, what they were waiting for wearing expensive clothes and watches. So I started talking to the owners of these small guest houses located there. When the budget foreigners come they stay at the budget guest house in the place called Sada street in Kolkata and some of these guys take these tourist to different places as a tourist guide and some of them act as gigolo. I felt there is a story behind all this. These young men who have given up other legitimate professions, do their families know about this, are they married, how much money do they make, what is their carreer prospective, does the guilty conscious haunt them... This was the beginning of the story and then there was a whole process of meeting them. They were reluctant to meet and give information, it was a difficult task to collect the information."

You have spelled Kolkata as Kalkatta in the novel, what is the reason?

"There is a reason behind this. Kolkata has many names and we Bengalis would refer to our city as Kolkata. British called it Kolkata. But the non-Bengali who lives in the city specially the marginalized and poor who have come from other states of the country and Bangladesh across the border, they refer to the city as Kalkatta. This is the indication that the centre of gravity of this story is set on the subaltern non-Bengalis."

What do you think about the growing intolerance in the country?

"If there was a world cup on tolerance, India would win and if there was a world cup on intolerance, again India would. This is a strange country where both tolerance and intolerance go together, we have intense tolerance and intolerance. It is not intolerance on religion or caste that we see now. The privileged in society often times betray those who do not have privileges. The protagonist of my novel Jamshed Alam is a person who wants to belong, wants to become like us, who does not have education, resources, guidance or mentorship and ends up becoming what he was."

Despite all the happenings around the country, would you still say you are proud of the country?

"Absolutely, every nation in the world in the history of humanity goes through transition. If you go back to the 19th century, the England of Charles Dickens was a difficult phase. It was very unjust, very cruel to the working class. But if you were to ask a British person of the 19th century if he was proud of his country, he would say yes. I would say you have to fight and struggle against what is ill and evil, that is how civilization progresses."

What do you suggest so that the Indian public in general becomes more conscious of their social responsibility?

"I am an Indian and I like to believe we are a culture, a civilization which is characterized by empathy. If we were not empathetic we would not have stayed together as a country as long as we have. Our diversity in terms of religious cultures and all other traditions are far better than other nations. So I think social consciousness, responsibility, empathy towards others, especially towards those who are not of our kind, is crucial."

National Seminar

After the media interaction, Dr Kunal Basu formally inaugurated the national seminar.

Addressing the students, Dr Basu spoke on the creative process of writing and said, "Writing does not have a standardized tool kit. It is not a formula that one learns and applies successfully. It is a formula one develops on one's own. I am not here to provide you prescription as to how to write but to describe how I write. For me, prior to publication there are three parts - Impulse, method and appraisal. Every writer is asked what made him write that particular story. It is a complex question. It involves day dreaming, that is looking around, thinking what made this happen, thinking about a story. When I travelled to Thailand my travel guide gave me a novel where I read Kolkata was the illicit hub of world's drug trade in the 19th century. That was how the plot of my first novel 'Opium Clerk' came from.

"Impulse is where these stories come from. I am avid reader of the newspaper. Truth is greater than friction. There are so many interesting stories, news written about in newspapers that provides content for day dreaming. The subject for 'The Japanese Wife' came from reading newspapers closely. You think of stories through day dreaming and how we create these stories is by feeling our environment. Two things I have learned about my own impulse on creating stories - One is, do not start with the abstract. Go looking, hunting for the particular events, things and places. Second thing is, do not be judgmental. If you are too hasty about your judgment your story writing will be slow."

"In order to generate fodder for my imagination, I expose myself to unfamiliar experiences in a planned manner. The excitement and curiosity create stories in mind, which I then put on paper. In exposing oneself of unfamiliar experiences, it is important that one is not judgmental. I try to be more accepting of the world around me and the research in turn fertilizes my imagination," he added.

Earlier in his welcome address, Dr Lourdusamy Arputhem, the chairman of the postgraduate department of English, said, "As teachers, we should know the undercurrents and nuances of the author, which may not be known to the lay reader."

Dr Kunal Basu also released 'Scribblings', an anthology of poems written by the department students.

Fr Swebert D'Silva, principal of the college presided over the inauguration ceremony of the seminar. Dr A M Narahari, registrar of the college and a seminar resource person Dr Padma Baliga, associate professor of English, St Joseph's Autonomous College, Bengaluru officiated on stage during the inauguration.

Another resource person Dr Rajalakshmi N K, associate professor of English, University College, Mangaluru and Vasant Kamat, head of product at Pan Macmillan India were present on the occasion.

Dr Melisa Goveas proposed the vote of thanks.