A B.A. (Hons.) in Economics from Presidency College, Calcutta and an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta - from a time when batch numbers were still in single digits - Pratik spent 30 years in advertising, marketing and entertainment media, including a 10-year stint as chief executive of The Walt Disney Company's first venture in India, before deciding to give it all up and turn to creative writing full-time. This is reflected in the fact that what started as a one-year Sabbatical in 2005 has now stretched to over seven!

"Clueless & Co." was Pratik's debut novel - a light-hearted, whimsical, tongue-in-cheek, bitingly irreverent and thoroughly exaggerated romp through a corporate Calcutta of the '80s. A Kindle version of it is now available in Amazon's various Kindle Stores.

With his Sabbatical indefinitely extended (a matter of some concern to those who have to endure his constant presence and frequent writer's blocks, with patience and good humour), Pratik followed through on "Clueless & Co." with "The Arty Farty Party" in the autumn of 2011. In the second book, he trains his irreverent and sardonic wit on the advertising world of the late 1980s, as a reluctant hero - for want of a better word - fumblingly adapts to its wacky, hedonistic lifestyle. In the battle between "body and bawdy", our chief protagonist - the unnamed 'I' from the first book - has a further set of bizarre, laugh-out-loud misadventures, encountering in his comedic journey a whole host of distinctive characters - gods, angels and demons alike - one more colourful than the other.

The last book in the loose trilogy is scheduled for release in the spring of 2013.

Pratik presently resides in Kolkata (as Calcutta - a pivotal character in his books - is now called) with his wife, Samita, who is a painter (www.samitabasu.com) and a golden retriever called Minnie, who is not, but quite wonderful all the same.