Ranjit Hoskote is a poet, cultural theorist and independent curator of present day art. He was born in Mumbai and educated at the Bombay Scottish School, Elphinstone, where he read for a BA in politics, and the University of Mumbai, where he took an MA in English Literature and Aesthetics. He belongs to the younger generation of Indian poets who began to write their works during the early 1990s. His work has been published in numerous Indian and international journals. He is author of five collections of poetry: Zones of Assault (1991), the Cartographer’s Apprentice (2000), the Sleepwalker’s Archieve (2001), Vanishing Acts (2006) and Central Time (2014). Although he was closely associated with Nissim Ezekiel, who was his mentor, Hoskote does not share Ezekiel’s poetics. Instead, his aesthetic choices align him with more closely with Dom Moraes and Adil Jussawalla. Of Moraes he writes very fondly in his obituary that Mr. Moraes was alternately attracted and repelled by India1. A feeling of permanently exile in Moraes’ poetry links him with Hoskote.