I am very conscious that, from the time of The God of Small Things was published 10 years ago, we are in a different world ... which needs to be written about differently, and I really very much want to do that.

In Delhi the cars are getting bigger and sleeker, the hotels are getting posher, the gates are getting higher, and the guards are no longer the old chowkidars, the watchmen, but they are fellows with guns. And yet the poor are packed into every crevice like lice in the city. People don't see that anymore. It's as if you shine a light very brightly in one place, the darkness deepens around.

And there it was again. Another religion turned against itself. Another edifice constructed by the human mind, decimated by human nature.

Truly, there's no alternative to stupidity. Cretinism is the mother of fascism. I have no defence against it, really....

The idea of "human rights," for example - sometimes it bothers me. Not in itself, but because the concept of human rights has replaced the much grander idea of justice.

My writing is translated into every Indian language, it's distributed in pamphlets, in little private video things, it's everywhere. So it's a lovely pastime for the middle class to think of itself as the whole nation.

If he touched her, he couldn't talk to her, if he loved her he couldn't leave, if he spoke he couldn't listen, if he fought he couldn't win.