Anjana Basu (centre) with Katy Lai Roy and Sumit Lai Roy at Bengal Club Pictures by Anindya Shankar Ray

When a novel has as its protagonist a dancer-politician, what better way to start an evening of discussing the book than with a dance?

A Bengal Club Library Event last Saturday, presented by The Telegraph, featured author Anjana Basu with selections from her fourth novel Rhythms of Darkness, and Susmita Chatterjee of Padatik with a Kathak solo choreographed to match the theme of the book.

Rhythms of Darkness revolves around Shyama Mondol, who dances her way to the summit of Bengal politics before going into self-imposed exile. Susmita’s solo, titled Shakti and set to classical music, was an ode to her.

The book has been published by Gyaana Books and is priced at Rs 295.

The kathak presentation was followed by Sumit and Katy Lai Roy of The Red Curtain theatre group reading out excerpts from the novel. “It’s a book that makes you think. Though you know it is fiction you can’t help draw parallels with real people,” Katy said.

Sumit called the book very believable. “Also, as in (the current box-office rage) Kahaani, there is a lot of Calcutta and Bengal in Anjana’s book,” he said.

In the end, it’s all about Shyama, her ambition, talent and travails. Author Anjana described the novel thus: “It is a book about a woman who becomes a politician, but she didn’t intend to become one. She became a politician by accident. And her rise is possibly a series of accidents.”

She dances, she manages to get into the top echelons of power, but when she gets there, when she has a following, she disappears. “The book, at its heart, is not about politics. It is a book about love, it is a book about betrayal and it is about life happening to people when they didn’t intend it.”

Club president Pronab Dasgupta asked Anjana why she chose to present Shyama as a dancer and not anything else. “Did you have any real-life politician who is also a dancer in mind?” quizzed the gynaecologist.

“It just happened. Shyama was taken from my earlier novel Black Tongue, where she danced,” Anjana said.

Katy, seated next to her, immediately quipped: “Hema Malini is a dancer and a member of Parliament!”

“We do events on authors regularly. Some of these are members who are authors — we have 61 members who have written 143 books on a wide range of subjects,” said Ram Ray, a committee member of The Bengal Club.

Besides four novels (Curses in Ivory, Black Tongue and the children’s book, Chinku and the Wolfboy, are the previous three) Anjana has to her credit an anthology of poems published by Penguin India and a collection of short stories called The Agency Raga.

Anjana’s short stories have been broadcast by the BBC. She has also worked on the scripts of Rituparno Ghosh’s Antarmahal and The Last Lear.