When I was very young, I used to share much of what I wrote with my family, but as I got older and more self-conscious, it became a much more private process.

The wheel turns and turns and turns: it never stops and stands still.

Usually a feeling of disappointment follows the book, because what I hoped to write is not what I actually accomplished. However, it becomes a motivation to write the next book.

The book begins and ends with the visits to give the impression of a tunnel into their ancestors and family history. I believe in going backwards into the past - I felt I was digging a tunnel back to the past.

India is a curious place that still preserves the past, religions, and its history. No matter how modern India becomes, it is still very much an old country.

What a sense of possession, of confidence, it gave one to have pockets, to shove one's fists into them, as if in simply owning pockets one owned riches, owned independence.

Isn't it strange how life won't flow, like a river, but moves in jumps, as if it were held back by locks that are opened now and then to let it jump forwards in a kind of flood?