Jayant Kashyap

What was your favorite book as a child?

I began my favourites list with Harry Potter but since 2016, which is when I believe my writing self began to shape itself, it has been Frankenstein.

What was the original reason or motivation why you started writing creatively?

In India, it’s a different thing, something few people do — certainly not someone from a middle-class family who needs one of the more prominent fields for financial security and/or stability. Literature as a career is almost forbidden, in a very unsaid manner, and aren’t all forbidden things thrilling to taste? (Take the apple, take Adam & Eve, and the beginning of our civilisation!)

What was the most adventurous or thrilling thing you ever did/experienced?

All of this has been a thrill — all of this! If you google my name, it comes up with poems in Magma, The Bombay Literary Magazine, and POETRY Magazine. And yet, nothing before 2017, isn’t that thrilling?

Do you listen to music while reading or writing?

I do, but once it gets serious, the music stops. It has to! As long as I’m not working on something between the two forms of art, each has a very dignified amount of time from my side and that bit of time belongs only to that particular form of art — it’s the same with enjoying paintings even, and every other (independent) form of art.