H.M. Naqvi looks a little lost. He is perched on the edge of his chair and is shifting uncomfortably. He searches his pockets and looks a bit peeved. I haven’t — not yet, anyway — asked him an uncomfortable question, so I am as lost as he is. Then I notice the unlit Davidoff dangling from his lips. He wants a light. But I am not letting go of him — litterateurs are famous for evading the press, even when they are cavorting at the Jaipur literature festival.

The winner of the inaugural DSC Prize for South Asian Literature of 2011 is particularly eel-like, I am told. I can believe that, for the Pakistani author had called off an earlier appointment with me. I am warned that he is a bit eccentric, and it won’t be easy to keep him engaged in an hour-long chat.

Naqvi, the cigarette still unlit, settles down and looks at me questioningly. I want to know all about his 2009 debut novel Home Boy, the tale of three Pakistani men in New York who decide to take a road trip in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks in the US. He calls it an immigrant’s tale, a story of love and loss, a writer’s contemplation on Americana and notions of collective identity.

“It took me three years to conceive the plot and four more to write it,” he says, now carefully placing the cigarette back into the packet. “When I started writing I wasn’t sure whether I would have a complete manuscript,” says Naqvi who is based in Karachi and writes in newspapers and journals.

The eldest of three brothers, Naqvi spent his growing up years in Karachi, Islamabad and New York since his father was a diplomat. “In New York, private schooling was expensive so I was put in a public school where my schoolmates were African-Americans. With my brown skin, I fitted in easily. But it wasn’t a renowned enough school for my parents,” he says, with a sheepish grin. He moved to P.S.6, whose most famous alumnus was J.D. Salinger, the author of The Catcher in the Rye.

Was he inspired by Salinger in any way? “The Catcher in the Rye was an American teenager’s coming-of-age novel and in Home Boy perhaps the most important theme is the classic coming-of-age story of three Pakistani young men,” he replies.

The book — a tragic-comic narrative — was born out of the developments that followed the 9/11 attacks. The novel, he points out, is “14 per cent” autobiographical, though he doesn’t quite explain how he reached that definitive figure. “All debut novels are always autobiographical,” Naqvi, who lost a close friend in the attacks, adds.

The backdrop of 9/11 gave his book its contemporary touch. “I come from an Urdu speaking background and grew up listening to Urdu poetry. But I can’t invoke Ghalib in the 21st century. I had to think about creating a figurative ecosystem that comprised Americana,” he says.

Some acquaintances of his walk in and interrupt our talk. They are keen to be photographed with the 36-year-old author. His excuses himself and poses for a few pictures. He does that so effortlessly — like an established star, in fact — that it’s difficult to recall that life wasn’t always a series of popping flashlights for Naqvi.

“I was destitute,” he’d said on stage after collecting the cash prize of $50,000. “A lot of hard work went into this novel and this is the culmination of a journey.”

In another life, he was a banker, a poet, a student and a teacher. After graduating from Georgetown University in 1996 with double degrees in economics and English literature, he started writing short stories for a living.

“I had this naïve notion of sustaining myself through writing in literary journals. I realised it was a misconstrued strategy when all I could earn was $150 for a short story. Thereby began my period of destitution,” he says with a deadpan expression. He spots a waiter and his face lights up. He asks him politely for a light and offers me a “hope you don’t mind look”.

Naqvi takes a drag and says he learnt to sustain himself on a daily budget of $2.50. During those days, he would have one big meal and shop at subsidised stores meant for homeless people. “I stopped eating out, drinking and even started cutting my own hair to save money.”

One day he walked into a slam poetry venue in Washington D.C. — where people read out their works on the spot, and a jury assesses them — and was overcome by the poetry marathon. Soon he was the star attraction of the Fifteen Minutes Club, where he kept the rowdy audience in check with his poetry sessions.

Poetry, perhaps, is Naqvi’s first love. He wrote his first poem when he was six, and, many years later, represented Pakistan at the National Poetry Slam at Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1995.

But when destitution, like a famished rat, started gnawing at him, Naqvi decided he had to move on. “I realised I needed to work,” he says.

Naqvi walked into the World Bank in the US with his résumé and landed himself a job in 1997. “The plan was to make money and retire to write a novel.”

After seven years there, Naqvi quit his job in 2003 to start work on his novel. He exhausted all his savings in eight months. But he got a scholarship for a master degree in creative writing from Boston University, where he also taught a couple of semesters.

“While I was working on the book between 2003 and 2007, I made just about $11,000. Thereby began my second period of destitution,” he says.

Naqvi used to work during the day and write at night. “I was in overdraft every month. If I’d thought about my financial situation it would have paralysed me,” he says candidly. He started cooking his own food and stopped socialising. “When I used to finely cut onions, my worries melted away.”

He lived in a rented room above Harvard Bookstore in Massachusetts. “I would sleep at 6am, wake up at 2pm, have something to eat and sit down to write from 4pm till 6.30pm. After a short nap, I would sit at my writing desk again till 11pm. Then I would have a big meal and go back to writing till the morning,” he recalls.

“In hindsight, my best times where those when I was able to sustain myself on a meagre $2.50 budget,” Naqvi adds.

His days of penury are over for now. Naqvi is smartly dressed in a pair of denims, a blue shirt, with the first few buttons undone, paired with a grey jacket, and pointy-toed brown leather shoes. With his shaved head and chiselled features, he looks more like a fashion icon than an author.

“You have to understand that being a writer isn’t easy,” he says, bringing me back to the present with his deep baritone. “It’s about tricking yourself into writing. It’s about how to negotiate life while writing,” he says with a faint smile.

So what is he working on next? “My next book is set in Karachi and talks about contemporary Pakistan, not contemporary America,” he replies.

A session entitled “Descent into Chaos” by author William Dalrymple and journalist-turned-writer Ahmed Rashid is in progress on the lawns of Jaipur’s Diggi Palace. We can overhear fragments of their conversation. Naqvi, who has been talking non-stop for 40 minutes, wants to listen to the discussion. “Hope you won’t mind if I go and catch up with the last bits of the session,” he says and dashes off spiritedly towards the lawns.

The writer, clearly, has a way with people. Naturally articulate, he has an impish sense of humour that pops up every now and then. He has been hailed for his flair and eclecticism, but is termed by some self-assuredly arrogant in his writings.

But then, Naqvi is a writer whose book actually began as a slam poem, scribbled on a cocktail napkin at a bar in 1993, where his words “boulevardiers, raconteurs, and renaissance men” paved the way for prose.

He is back now, with a few more cryptic words. “Commenting on Pakistan has now become a cottage industry,” he grumbles with a straight face. The session, clearly, has been evoking reactions on developments in Pakistan.

But Husain M. Naqvi — who only goes by his initials — has other issues to worry about. His new book, for instance. “I have an itch and I need to scratch it. I write because I have a certain idea that needs to be explained,” says Naqvi. And what could be better than that?