When Deven is asked to interview India's greatest Urdu poet, Nur, he sees an opportunity to escape the miseries of his life as a frustrated small-town scholar. But Deven's hopes for fame and fulfilment soon turn to disaster. The dissolute old man he finds deep in the bazaars of Old Delhi bears no resemblance to the idol of his youth, and as Deven is fooled, cheated and bullied by Nur and the people who surround him, the whole project seems destined to end in a new kind of captivity. 'In Custody' has recently been made into a film by Merchant Ivory.
