His grandfather, Laksmikanta Roy Choudhury, was a photographer in Kolkata who had been trained by Rudyard Kipling's father, the curator of the Lahore Museum.

The school was administered by the Brahmo Samaj movement, a monotheistic religion founded in 1830 in Kolkata by Ram Mohun Roy, who aimed to purify Hinduism and recover the simple worship of the Vedas.

[2][3] The Hungryalist movement was initially led by Malay; his brother, Samir Roychoudhury; Shakti Chattopadhyay; and Haradhon Dhara, known by his pseudonym Debi Roy.

Thirty more poets and artists subsequently joined them, the best-known being Rajkamal Chaudhary, Binoy Majumdar, Utpal Kumar Basu, Falguni Roy, Subimal Basak, Tridib Mitra, Rabindra Guha, and Anil Karanjai.

The movement's English name was derived from Geoffrey Chaucer's line "in the sowre hungry tyme", and its philosophy was based on Oswald Spengler's "The Decline of the West".

[4] Hungryalism petered out in 1965, when the West Bengal government issued arrest warrants for eleven Hungryalists, including Roy Choudhury and his brother.

[5] Howard McCord, a professor of English at Washington State University and Bowling Green University who met Roy Choudhury during a visit to Kolkata, wrote in City Lights Journal Number Three: "Malay Roy Choudhury, a Bengali poet, has been a central figure in the Hungry Generation's attack on the Indian cultural establishment since the movement began in the early 1960s.

Acid, destructive, morbid, nihilistic, outrageous, mad, hallucinatory, shrill—these characterize the terrifying and cleansing visions" that "Indian literature must endure if it is to be vital again."

Roy Choudhury wrote three drama during the Hungryalism movement: Illot, Napungpung and Hibakusha, considered to be a mash-up of the Theatre of the Absurd and Transhumanism.

With his 1963 poem "Prachanda Baidyutik Chhutar" ("Stark Electric Jesus"), which prompted the government's actions against the Hungryalists, Roy Choudhury introduced Confessional poetry to Bengali literature.

Roy Choudhury also translated into Bengali works by William Blake ("The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"), Arthur Rimbaud ("A Season in Hell"), Tristan Tzara (Dada manifestos and poems), André Breton's Surrealism manifesto and poems, Jean Cocteau ("Crucifixion"), Blaise Cendrars ("Trans-Siberian Express"), and Allen Ginsberg ("Howl" and "Kaddish").

Roy Choudhury wrote extensively on the life and works of Allen Ginsberg, Henry Miller, James Joyce, Charles Baudelaire, Jean Arthur Rimbaud, Osip Mandelstam, Marcel Proust and Anna Akhmatova.

In 2003, he was given the Sahitya Academy award, the Indian government's highest honour in the field, for translating Dharamvir Bharati's Suraj Ka Satwan Ghora.

His poetry collections from this phase are Chitkar Samagra, Chhatrakhan, Ja Lagbey Bolben, Atmadhangser Sahasrabda, Postmodern Ahlader Kobita, and Kounaper Luchimangso.

After Roy Choudhury shifted to Mumbai from Calcutta he ventured into Magic realism and wrote novels such as Labiyar Makdi, Chashomranger Locha, Thek Shuturmurg, Jungle Romio, Necropurush and Naromangshokadhoker Halnagad.

[7] A 2014 film based on Roy Choudhury's poem Stark Electric Jesus was directed by Mrigankasekhar Ganguly and Hyash Tanmoy.