Novel Thoughts

The creator of memorable books and characters such as Karim in The Buddha of Suburbia,Omar in My Beautiful Laundrette,the unnamed protagonist in Intimacy,Kureishi holds forth on questions of identity and the immigrant experience in London. “Identity is not something you create on your own,it is co-related to how people see you. It is one of the biggest factors determining how you see yourself,” says Kureishi. This is one of the reasons why he can never write about another Karim Amir. “When I was younger,I wrote about people younger than me. I’m much older now,I can only write about older people. It’s that co-relation at work,” says Kureishi,who prefers to stay a local writer in London. “I live in West London and I am fascinated by the city. I have a house there,I look out of the window and I write about the clothes,the politics,the local scene,” says Kureishi.

But in a multi-cultural London that is marketing itself fiercely for the 2012 Olympic Games,being an immigrant too has taken on a new meaning. “Everybody is from all over the world. It isn’t the London I knew when I was growing up. There is a certain image about Muslims. And it is very difficult for them to escape that projection. But Muslims too have themselves to blame for this,” says Kureishi who then talks about how he was thrown out of a mosque in London because he was friends with Salman Rushdie,when the fatwa against him had been issued.

Currently he’s working on two projects,one’s for the money he says. “I’m writing the screenplay for Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger. I enjoyed the book,it was very amusing and has cinematic scope,” says Kureishi. He has written two drafts of the screenplay while writing some short fiction that he has no concrete plans for just as yet. How about getting a room in India and looking out of the window to write a book? “Well,you just might have something there.”