Diksha Basu
Born
Delhi, India
NationalityAmerican
Alma materCornell University
Occupation(s)Writer, Actress
Parents

Diksha Basu is an American writer and actress.[1][2] She is the author of the novel The Windfall which is under adaptation for a television series by Shonali Bose.[3][4]

Biography

Diksha Basu was born in Delhi,[5] to the sociologist Alaka Malwade Basu and economist Kaushik Basu,[2] who later became the Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India and then the Chief Economist at the World Bank.[2][6] She grew up in Delhi during the 1990s till the age of 10.[7] She moved to Ithaca, New York in 1994,[8] as a teenager with her family.[1] Basu states that after moving to upstate New York, she would keep visiting Delhi every 4 to 6 months.[9] She eventually graduated from Cornell University with a Bachelor of Arts in economics,[1] and in the French language as part of a double major.[6]

In 2008,[10] she moved to Mumbai to pursue a career in acting,[6] and lived in the city for four years.[5] She featured in the comedy series Mumbai Calling (2007) and in the drama film A Decent Arrangement (2011).[6][10] She began writing while in Mumbai, and her debut novel Opening Night was published by HarperCollins and launched in 2012 by Chetan Bhagat.[10] The novel depicted the struggles of an American-born actor who moved to Mumbai to pursue a career in acting.[10] It was described as a deeply personalised non autobiographical work of literary fiction.[11]

Basu joined the Columbia University School of the Arts to attain a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing, from where she graduated in 2014.[3][11] She also featured in the memory film A Million Rivers (2017).[12] In the meantime, she married the music producer Mikey McCleary and gave birth to her daughter in 2017.[13] Her second novel The Windfall was also published and launched in the same year,[7] it was a humorous fiction marketed as a debut novel and depicted the life of a middle class Indian man who had suddenly encountered wealth.[14] It received positive critical acclaim and was signed in for a deal to be adapted into a television series.[9][3] According to ELLE magazine, it broke stereotypes of exoticism surrounding India while according to The Wire, it was a "shrewd and unstintingly funny story about the neuroses of New Delhi's 1%".[1][8] The Hindu gave it a mixed review objecting at its lack of nuance and inaccuracies in social and cultural depictions.[14]

In 2020, she published her third novel, Destination Wedding.[15]

Books

  • Opening Night (2012)
  • The Windfall (2017)
  • Destination Wedding (2020)

Filmography

YearTitleRoleNotes
2007Mumbai CallingCall Centre OperatorDebut
2011A Decent ArrangementAmita Chandra
2017A Million Rivers

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Patel, Naheed (14 August 2017). "Readers Are No Longer Looking for Only the Exotic Indian or the Immigrant Novel". The Wire. Retrieved 20 November 2020.
  2. 1 2 3 Bakshi, Asmita (29 May 2017). "When I started writing, I Felt Freed". India Today. Retrieved 20 November 2020.
  3. 1 2 3 Deng, Audrey (25 June 2020). "Diksha Basu '14 Releases Second Novel, 'Destination Wedding'". Columbia University School of the Arts. Retrieved 21 November 2020.
  4. ↑ Roy, Gitanjali (14 March 2017). "Shonali Bose Will Direct New TV Series Based On Novel About Delhi's Noveau [sic] Riche - NDTV Movies". NDTVMovies. Retrieved 21 November 2020.
  5. 1 2 "Diksha Basu - Author Overview". HarperCollins Publishers. Retrieved 20 November 2020.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Rathnam, Shilpa; Rege, Prachi; Bari, Nishant; Kumaraswami, Lakshmi; Sharma, Avantika (30 January 2012). "CEC Kaushik Basu's daughter Diksha busy chasing B'wood dreams". India Today. Retrieved 20 November 2020.
  7. 1 2 Kohli, Diya (22 July 2017). "Diksha Basu: The joke's on everyone". Livemint. Retrieved 21 November 2020.
  8. 1 2 Aggarwal-Schifellite, Manisha (26 June 2017). "An Ex-Bollywood Actress Challenges Indian Stereotypes With Her Debut Novel". ELLE. Retrieved 20 November 2020.
  9. 1 2 Arora, Naina (3 August 2017). "Author Diksha Basu says Gurgaon lanes look straight out of Desperate Housewives". Hindustan Times. Retrieved 20 November 2020.
  10. 1 2 3 4 Mehta, Shweta (8 January 2012). "'My life's not interesting enough'". Hindustan Times. Retrieved 20 November 2020.
  11. 1 2 Bakshi, Asmita (29 May 2017). "The Traveller's Tale". India Today – via Pressreader.
  12. ↑ Ramnath, Nandini (1 February 2017). "The things we do not and cannot say flow through arthouse film 'A Million Rivers'". Scroll.in. Retrieved 20 November 2020.
  13. ↑ Vora, Shivani (30 June 2017). "How Diksha Basu, a Novelist, Spends Her Sundays (Published 2017)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 21 November 2020.
  14. 1 2 Guha, Keshava (22 July 2017). "Ambitious but ill-equipped". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 21 November 2020.
  15. ↑ Ghosh, Devarsi. "Diksha Basu's 'Destination Wedding' is a funny but sensitive look at old money and new India". Scroll.in. Retrieved 26 April 2021.
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