Chattarji was born on the 17th of November 1970 in Dessie, Ethiopia and raised in Darjeeling, India where her parents taught at St. Paul’s School, a British-style residential public school. She later moved to New Delhi to study English Literature at university. Living in places rich in diversity, language, and character, in her formative years, instilled in her a profound curiosity about the world around her. After graduating from Lady Shri Ram College in New Delhi, Chattarji spent seven years working in the advertising industry before becoming a full-time writer. Now based in Thane, on the north-eastern side of Mumbai, she draws from the vibrant multiplicity of Indian life, weaving her past, present, and imagined future experiences into her writing. 
 
Her extensive catalogue of published works notably includes: Space Gulliver: Chronicles of an Alien (2020), a whimsical book of poetry exploring ‘first-time-ness’; Dirty Love (2013), a gritty and surreal short story collection about Bombay/Mumbai; Wordygurdyboom! The Nonsense World Of Sukumar Ray (2016), a vibrant translation of Sukumar Ray’s writing; Future Library: Contemporary Indian Writing (2022), an anthology of Indian authors writing in, and translating into English; and more recently, a collection of poetry titled Unmappable Moves (2023). In addition to her writings, Chattarji was the Charles Wallace Writer in Residence at the University of Kent in 2012, and in 2019 she was appointed as the Paris Writer in Residence at the American University of Paris. She has also been a judge for a number of literary awards, including the Wales Book of the Year in 2020. 
 
Her poetry is defined by a stream-of-consciousness approach and is often written in free verse. In her writing, the poet regularly makes use of surrealist imagery by making the everyday unfamiliar and alien. This way of writing allows for an unrestricted exploration of complex subjects such as gender, feminism, urbanisation, postcolonial identity, and the intricate relationship between tradition and modernity. Chattarji writes her poetry in English, a language she describes as “the medium of instruction and my chosen language for dreaming, writing, reading”. Accordingly, her writing captures her personal paradox of navigating multilingualism and multicultural realities. In keeping with this, in an interview with the Los Angeles Review of Books, she posits: “What I borrow from translation is ferocious attentiveness, relaxed play, and fresh conceptual fields. What I leave behind is another version of me. An English-me whose hidden core is Bengali (as if the center had been swapped)”. 
 
The poet creates imagined spaces where her readers can vividly engage with themes of identity, belonging, and the ever-changing complexities of modern life. Chattarji frequently invites her audience to question, reflect on, and reimagine the world around them. For example, in “Boxes”, she transports her reader to a claustrophobic Mumbai apartment and encourages them to reflect upon the realities of urbanisation. As a poet and translator, she continues to challenge the constraints of language and identity, resulting in a body of work that evolves with time. Her poems are a source of inspiration and provocation, challenging readers to see the world, and themselves, for the first time again. 

Photo credit: Dirk Skiba.