I grew up, as many Indians do, in an archipelago of tongues. My maternal grandfather, who was a surgeon in the city of Madras, was fluent in at least four languages and used each of them daily.

Every book is a kind of struggle, and it's a miracle when it comes out.

The moment you recognize what is beautiful in this world, you stop being a slave

I had grown up in a privileged, upper-caste Hindu community; and because my father worked for a Catholic hospital, we lived in a prosperous Christian neighborhood.

In a sense, journalism can be both helpful and detrimental to a writer of fiction because the kind of writing you need to do as a journalist is so different. It has to be clear, unambiguous, concise, and as a writer often you are trying to do things that are more ambiguous. I find that writing fiction is often an antidote to reading and writing too much journalism.

I’ve lived in several countries and been a disaster everywhere.

Any good society survives on a circulation of favours.