'I write in a panic'

Sitting across the table with Siddharth Chowdhury, you would think he's an editor at an academic publishing house (which he is) with an interest in languid poetry (which he doesn't) and has never opened a 'gentleman's 
magazine' (his early stories came out in the venerable Debonair).

"Well, that was a bit awkward, I guess, showing it at home," says Chowdhury. "Nothing drastic, just awkward," says the 36-year-old author of Day Scholar, a stunning book set in early 90s Delhi that seamlessly juxtaposes the poetry of everyday violence with that of bright-eyed tenderness that only the young wear. And all this, Chowdhury laces with a dark comic fluid that the reader ends up laughing at even though he knows it's not funny.

"I'm very autobiographical," he says not at all sounding like a walking-talking tautology. "This is the time and place I know well. I've been there myself, 1992 Zakir Husain College, living in a hostel with friends."

Full report here Hindustan Times