With fiery journalists for parents, it was but natural for Ali Sethi to begin an affair with the written word. His debut novel, The Wish Maker, though set in Lahore, has a strong Bollywood influence

Ali Sethi is not your regular 25-year-old. He is not on Facebook; he claims he doesn't even know what Twitter is; and he doesn't trust the blog. Instead, he spends his time writing a book The Wish Maker that tells you about the wide gap between the wishes we make and what we achieve.

In the book, Ali has recreated Lahore for readers as his story crisscrosses the present and the past. The central characters in his novel are all women. The book is about fate and choice where they are not conflicting but complement each other.

Born in Lahore and educated in Harvard, Ali is grounded, has a great sense of humour and infuses his reading with such drama that he leaves the audience spellbound. So once he gets talking, it's tough to stop him.u00a0

You're a published author at 25. How did you achieve that?
One Spring break in 2006, when everyone went home, I had nowhere to go, so I stayed on. I was listening to a night raga on my ipod, and suddenly I had these thoughts running riot in my head. I just wanted to capture my thoughts and I began writing.u00a0