Diksha Basu
Diksha Basu is an Indian American[1] writer and actor.[2] She is the author of the critically acclaimed 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 the University of Cornell with a Bachelor of Arts in economics,[1] and in the French language as part of a double major.[6]
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][10] She also featured in the memory film A Million Rivers (2017).[11] In the meantime, she married the music producer Mikey McCleary and gave birth to her daughter in 2017.[12] Her novel The Windfall was also published and launched in the same year,[7] it was a humourous fiction marketed as a debut novel and depicted the life of a middle class Indian man who had suddenly encountered wealth.[13] 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.[13]
References
- 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.
- Bakshi, Asmita (29 May 2017). ""When I started writing, I Felt Freed"". India Today. Retrieved 20 November 2020.
- Deng, Audrey (25 June 2020). "Diksha Basu '14 Releases Second Novel, 'Destination Wedding'". Columbia University School of the Arts. Retrieved 21 November 2020.
- Roy, Gitanjali (14 March 2017). "Shonali Bose Will Direct New TV Series Based On Novel About Delhi's Noveau Riche - NDTV Movies". NDTVMovies. Retrieved 21 November 2020.
- "Diksha Basu - Author Overview". HarperCollins Publishers. Retrieved 20 November 2020.
- 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.
- Kohli, Diya (22 July 2017). "Diksha Basu: The joke's on everyone". Livemint. Retrieved 21 November 2020.
- Aggarwal-Schifellite, Manisha (26 June 2017). "An Ex-Bollywood Actress Challenges Indian Stereotypes With Her Debut Novel". ELLE. Retrieved 20 November 2020.
- Arora, Naina (3 August 2017). "Author Diksha Basu says Gurgaon lanes look straight out of Desperate Housewives". Hindustan Times. Retrieved 20 November 2020.
- Bakshi, Asmita (29 May 2017). "The Traveller's Tale". India Today – via Pressreader.
- 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.
- 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.
- Guha, Keshava (22 July 2017). "Ambitious but ill-equipped". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 21 November 2020.