‘Day-Scholar’ by Siddharth Chowdhury

Day-Scholar by Siddharth Chowdhury (Picador, 2010)

An enjoyable tale of life in Delhi University in the 1990s. I was struck by how much the university, and indeed, the cultural climate of Delhi, had already changed since my own university days in the 1970s. Siddharth Chowdhury’s protagonist goes to book-readings and there seems to exist some kind of literary culture that makes it possible to discuss writing, publishing and the like.

In the 1970s book-readings were unheard of in Delhi, and to talk about writing (or even reading) was considered pretentious in the extreme: these were secrets whispered behind closed doors.