“No book has touched me so much…”

No book has touched me so much since Ashok Banker’s Vertigo, another semi-autobiographical first book I picked up from a pavement bookseller in Bombay’s Churchgate. It was mid 90’s and I was a young marketing engineer in that city. I suppose it is the empathy factor that endears one to books so. Banker’s portrayal was the stuff of dark noir beyond my realm even. But the angst of youth with its attendant insecurities and also possibilities is what had me hooked. I have been following the reclusive writer’s fortunes ever since. One got to feel Bombay, raw and smelly yet strangely captivating in those mesmerizing pages.

Biju Parameswaran