Painter, poet, writer, spy; film rights sold

By Chandrima S. Bhattacharya - Calcutta Telegraph - Calcutta,India

Thursday, December 7, 2006

If she were better known, Noor Inayat Khan would be the subject of Hollywood. But that is likely now.

Noor was the great-great-great-granddaughter of Tipu Sultan. Her father was a Sufi mystic and musician who went to Paris and settled there. The quiet, dreamy and beautiful half-Indian, half-American Noor was a poet, story-writer, painter, musician — and a spy.

Noor, who had lived in France and Britain, was the only Indian secret agent working for Britain during WW II and the first woman wireless operator in occupied France, one of the deadliest zones.

On Tuesday evening, Shrabani Basu, author of Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan, read from her book at a city bookstore. The event was attended by Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi, and one of Tipu Sultan’s descendants.

Spy Princess has done brisk business. Published by Roli Books here, it has gone into its third reprint since July.

Noor, a shy girl with no British blood in her, on a suicide mission to fight Fascism, but fiercely loyal to India’s independence, arriving at the British RAF station in a car called The Hearse, landing on a full moon night in France, is a strange, touching, tragic portrait. But she has inspired a lot of writing already — a 1952 biography, and two novels, one English and one French.
So what led Basu to writing Noor again?

“Not many in India know her,” says Basu, whose work received a boost when the UK declassified documents relating to the war in 2003. She discovered Noor’s letters in the documents — and the person.

As radio operator, her codename was Madeleine. When she was shot by the Gestapo after eluding them for months, she was only 30.

Noor’s may become a more familiar story, since economist and Labour Peer Meghnad Desai has bought the film rights from Basu, a London-based journalist. “It may be an Indian-Hollywood-British production,” says Basu, who will collaborate on the screenplay.