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Samit’s well kept secrets
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Author Samit Basu reveals there is no food he does not like
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Photo Anu Pushkarna
Shrimps for company Samit Basu says he is a sworn carnivore:
“I am pop culture.” Samit Basu is on time. Casual in a printed cotton kurta and jeans, his over-grown hair dishevelled, Basu waits in a corner fiddling with his cell phone. He looks every bit the clichéd “flaky w
riter.”
“I am very focused,” he retorts with mock-seriousness and sinks into the green sofa at Patio, the ornate Coffee Shop at The Metropolitan, where the Monsoon Festival is on till July 31. Soft instrumentals play the background score as Basu looks over the menu, dismisses the idea of mocktails and settles for cold coffee.
Productive years
Basu raised many eyebrows when he dropped out of IIM-A to pursue writing. Seven years on, at 27, he is already out with two novels of a trilogy — “The Simoqin Prophecies” and “The Manticore’s Secret” — and a few short stories and is juggling with comic strips and newspaper columns. The young author is credited with giving the genre of fantasy fiction in India a nudge.
"The third novel in the ‘Game World’ trilogy will be out in December,” says Basu. Besides, he says a couple of “fairly big projects” are also on the anvil. Basu is on rewind mode. “It was not a strategic decision to start with a fantasy novel.”
But he knows he was lucky. “Five years back they would have been scared to publish such a novel. But today, there are new readers, and experimental writing is welcome,” Basu explains. Myths – Indian and Greek, parody and Western pop works its way through to Basu’s fantasy fiction.
“Writers are the maddest people,” he quips. But Basu was convinced he “wanted to make a living writing fiction.” For many, Samit Basu is the ‘desi’ Harry Potter. “Am I?” He arches his eyebrows. “I would like the money though,” Basu says sipping the cold coffee, never running out of one-liners.
It’s time to place the order, but Basu needs help. He cannot make up his mind whether to go with chilli mozzarella munchers or chocolate ginger mousse.
The hotel staffer comes to his aid and orders caraway and coriander flavoured macchli and shrimp tempura.
Basu vouches he is not so at sea when it comes to his everyday food. “I cook. The Goan sausage curry and prawn malai curry are my specialties,” he says convincingly. Basu is a little high on Goa after the holiday there earlier this year.
“I decided I should get a little more of life and spend lesser time hunched before the computer,”
Basu elucidates on his vacation after six years. “But I will be back at the computer once poverty ensues,” he jokes.
Life can be tough when he is chasing deadlines, and food is often the last thought on his mind. “I am like a camel,” he says heartily, explaining he can go without food for a while. But he wears the chef’s cap for guests. “The guests tend to look very nervous when I cook,” jests Basu, laying bare his strategy. “If the food is good it gets over. Otherwise, the idea is to get them drunk quickly, so they wouldn’t know anyway.”
Cutting apart the deep-browned machchli, he says he is a “sworn carnivore.”
“The older I grow, I realise there is nothing I don’t like. Recently, I have realised the lure of vegetables. I think I am evolving as a person,” says Basu tongue-in-cheek, trying the mammoth shrimps. Basu refuses to take himself seriously and probably that’s where he is a refreshing change. If most writers strive to keep up their “serious image”, Basu is a contrast.
“I am perfectly silly,” he declares. The last of the great shrimps is done with, and Basu announces, “They were pretty monsoony.” As we take leave, I wonder how he would get back. “I will quietly get into an auto,” he says casually.
P. ANIMA
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