It's hard not to come away from Katherine Boo's writing as one would from a film. Not a homochromatic documentary on the poor and disadvantaged, but cinema verite with a pounding pulse, and a full cast of operatives - scheming parents, forgotten babies, entrepreneurial youngsters, all on the wrong side of a political and civic machine. Boo, a staff writer at The New Yorker and a Pulitzer Prize winner for her work at The Washington Post, has just published her first book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers. It's a ground-eye view of life inside a slum called Annawadi that sits by the Mumbai airport. Boo spent four years at Annawadi. She talks to TOI-Crest about the rigours of immersive journalism.

How do you prepare yourself for the sort of immersive journalism you practise?

It's hard to prepare for a situation that you can't possibly understand until you're in it. Each community has its own rules and rhythms.