About

Arundhati Basu was born in Salalah, Oman, where she spent the formative years of her childhood. Eventually, she moved with her parents to Calcutta, India, where she spent a bookish childhood cramming her head with daydreams of attending clifftop boarding schools (the suitable carrot being midnight feasts and tuck boxes). She earned a B.A. in English Literature from Presidency College, Calcutta, and a Master’s Diploma in Print Journalism from the Indian Institute of Mass Communications in Delhi. Basu started her career with reporting for newspapers in Delhi, The Times of India and The Telegraph. After working for a decade as a journalist, she moved to the United Kingdom with her husband and struck out on her own as a freelance writer.

As a compulsive traveller, Basu started a blog in 2016 that goes by the title, The Travelling Diary of a Dippy Dotty Girl. On it she posts stories from her travels, of seeing places that are going to wrack and ruin, some that are not, and she writes about the various foods, cultures and personalities she encounters along the way; sometimes, she writes of her experiences of getting lost by herself or stranded in some lonely town somewhere. Most content in her own company, when she is not writing or wool gathering, she is to be found painting watercolours. Basu lives in the United States, in Upstate New York with her husband, a part-time miles geek and full-time wealth management consultant.