In a city that has long shaped writers, Dr. Mukulika Basu has returned to a subject many readers still talk about: how life, and love, shifted after COVID-19. Her latest work, Love Before & After Corona, places that change at the center of a story that moves between memory and the present. The book comes at a time when readers continue to look for stories that reflect daily life after the pandemic, not in charts or case counts, but in choices, losses, and quiet resets.
Basu, who lives in Kolkata, has built a steady profile as a fiction author and poet. Her earlier books focused on poetry and social themes. This new novel stays close to that path. It does not aim to shock. It aims to record.
A Career Shaped by Writing and Public Work
Dr. Mukulika Basu holds a degree in English Honours and has worked across several fields, from writing and painting to social work, public speaking, and modelling. Over the years, she has received several recognitions, including a NASM “Best Writer” citation and an honorary doctorate in writing. In 2025, she also became the winner in the poetry section at the Summer Carnival Talent Championship by Glitz and Glory.
Basu writes from both imagination and experience. In past interviews and public notes, she has said that her writing mirrors her mind. That idea fits the tone of her new book.
From Personal Loss to a New Direction
In recent years, Basu’s life took turns that reshaped her work. The loss of her mother pushed her toward spiritual study and the occult field. Today, she works with tarot reading and psychic guidance, alongside her writing and art. She also stays active in social causes. The death of her father has made her more practical and stronger, according to people close to her.
This background does not turn the novel into a memoir. Still, it helps explain why the book handles stress, fear, and hope with a steady hand. The pandemic years did not just test health systems. They tested families, jobs, and trust. Basu places her characters inside those tests and lets the reader watch how they respond.
What the New Book Tries to Show
Love Before & After Corona tracks how one life, and the people around it, change across the pandemic line. The story moves from a time when plans felt stable to a time when each plan came with doubt. It shows a period when work stopped, travel broke, and homes turned into offices, schools, and clinics at once.
The book focuses on choice: to stay or to leave. Through these moments, Basu shows how pressure changes bonds. The novel does not pick a side. It reports what happens when stress sits in a room for too long.
A Wider Look at Post-COVID Life
The timing of the book matters. Even in 2026, the world still measures the pandemic in quiet ways. Offices keep hybrid rules. Families plan with more care. Health remains part of daily conversation. In this setting, a story about “before and after” finds a clear audience.
Publishers and booksellers in Kolkata say readers continue to ask for fiction that reflects recent years without turning them into lectures. Basu’s book fits that need. It stays in the lane of story, not slogan. That may explain why early readers describe it as easy to follow but hard to forget.
Part of a Growing Body of Work
This is not Basu’s first step into long fiction. Her earlier titles include Kobitar Prithibi (The World of Poetry), Propose With A Pen, A Hope from New Barrackpore to New York and World Of Poetry. These books deal with emotion, choice, and social limits, though in different forms.
Basu often writes about people who stand at a turn in the road. In the new novel, that turn is the pandemic. The scale is larger, but the method stays the same. The focus remains on people, while events work in the background.
Readers and Reach
Her blog and social pages also keep that connection alive. The blog talks about simple topics like taking a “Me Day,” finding comfort in books, and learning how to write. The tone stays emotional and direct, much like her fiction.
Why This Book Fits the Moment
The Indian book market has seen a rush of pandemic stories. Many focus on hospitals or policy. Fewer look at daily life inside homes and relationships. Love Before & After Corona fills that gap. It does not try to sum up the crisis. It shows what the crisis did to small plans and private ties.
For readers in Kolkata and beyond, that focus may feel closer to the truth. Most people did not live the pandemic through headlines. They lived it through calls that did not come, trips that got canceled, and rooms that felt smaller each day.
Looking Ahead
Dr. Mukulika Basu continues to divide her time between writing, art, modelling, social work, and her spiritual practice. She says she plans to keep working in all these fields. For now, Love Before & After Corona stands as a record of a shared break in time. It does something simpler and, in many ways, harder. It tells one story and trusts readers to see their own days inside it. In a country still sorting out what “after” means, that may be enough.
