Monsoon Wedding had the perfect script: Dalrymple

William Dalrymple is known as a best-selling author not without a reason as all his works vanish from the bookshelves as soon as it hits them. Now, there’s double joy awaiting the author as his ‘history book’ White Mughals is being adapted into a movie.

“It’s been in the development stages for a while, almost five years to be precise. I am not familiar with the movie world, but I hear that it’s quite normal that things proceed at a snail’s pace. We have got the best screenwriter in Christopher Hampton, who won an Oscar last year. He’s written fantastic movies like The Quiet American and Dangerous Liaisons,” he says.

Though Dalrymple is not familiar with the movie world, he surely does know a thing or two about scripts.  Talking about the ‘perfect script’, he says, “Monsoon Wedding was astonishing. It had the perfect script. And it’s incredible it was written by a graduate student of Columbia University, Sabrina Dhawan as a thesis script. She’s a Punjabi girl from Delhi. It was the only time I saw the Delhi I know – the farmhouse world, Punjabi weddings etc. I’ve never seen Delhi like that even in novels or documentaries.”