Rohan Gogoi

Last year, while working on his yet-untitled second novel, Pune-based author Rohan Gogoi decided to include a poetically-inclined character who hails from Delhi with roots in Uttar Pradesh. "In UP, a lot of importance is given to Urdu literature, music and drama. In fact, along with Hindi, you'll also see signboards in Urdu. So, in order to infuse a level of authenticity in the character, I decided to add some Urdu phrases into his lines," Gogoi says of Tejeswar Singh Negi. The only problem was that his own knowledge of the language was limited to the ghazals he had heard while growing up in Assam. Undaunted, he decided to go ahead nonetheless.