In this latest book, author Mimlu Sen tells you why she gave up a life in Paris to wander the streets of India singing with the Bauls, only to take one of them she fell in love with, back to Paris to form an afro-jazz band

She left home at 18 to join the prestigious Presidency College in Kolkata, only to drop out because she couldn't concentrate on studying Shelley's "pathetic fallacy". She then went on to do voluntary social work in famine-struck Bihar, and ended up in France when she decided to break away from her group during a college trip.
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Mimlu Sen and Paban at a private concert in Kolkata, 1986.

A few years later, after falling in love with a married Frenchman and living in with him and his wife in strange harmony, author Mimlu Sen returned to India when the music of the Bauls lured her back to Kolkata.

Her book, Baulsphere, chronicles her wild journey spent travelling with the wandering minstrels of Bengal. She fell in love with one of them, Paban, with whom she travelled on foot, sang in buses and trains.

Their melodies were heart-wrenching, their texts poignant the Bauls and their favourite musical instrument the ektara introduced Mimlu to tantrics, exorcisms, witch sightings, catfish that climb
trees, sex-yogic secrets and wild, tumultuous love.

You've led a pretty exciting life. What about the Bauls made you leave Paris?
The Baul songs I heard in Paris reincarnated a life of creation and desire, for without desire, life is nothing. At the same time, I was dismayed to see the Bauls on a "scene a l'italienne",u00a0 reduced to exoticism on a Western stage. They were so utterly brilliant so compelling and magnetic. Till then, I had no idea that village culture in India was so profound and close to my heart.