Strap on your seatbelt, because Kunal Basu’s ‘Filmi Stories’ is a racy and rollicking read
‘Filmi Stories’ by Kunal Basu | Penguin Vintage | Rs 499 | 272 pages
ISSUE DATE: Sep 11, 2023 | UPDATED: Sep 1, 2023 16:50 IST
Filmi Stories was writer Kunal Basu’s pandemic project. After all, what better way for a writer to allay the effects of cabin fever than to take up the pen. “In the fleeting spring of 2021, as the world was reeling from the pandemic, I thought to write a few stories to drive out the despair that was filling me up like smoke in a chimney stack,” says Basu in the ‘Prologue’ to this short story collection. He dipped into his Havana cigar box, where he kept hastily scribbled notes brimming with story ideas, but that didn’t do the trick. Inspiration manifested in unexpected and dramatic ways–during a game of Monopoly in one case–not unlike the stories themselves.