The author of the critically acclaimed dystopian novels The Competent Authority and Murder with Bengali Characteristics, Shovon Chowdhury was a writer with a razor-sharp wit whose work blended the bizarre with the profound. Part-jester, part-rationalist, he employed his terrific sense of humour (often directed at himself) to put an absurd spin on reality. Besides generous excerpts from his widely praised novels, in the section entitled ‘The Investigator’ the book presents a selection from his longest-running column with the tagline ‘We dig for the truth. So you don’t have to’; ‘We the People’ is a series of reactions to the increasingly bewildering political world; ‘The 4-Minute Manager™’ aims to make a management guru out of everyone; ‘Ask Uncle’ carries advice from your friendly neighbourhood uncle; ‘What If’ presents alternate histories from the Chinese capturing Assam to Madhuri never performing ‘Ek, Do, Teen’ and more; also included are poetry and the previously unpublished piece, ‘I Lost My Trousers in Tiljala’.