Flat muscled and honey coloured. Sea secrets in his eyes. A silver raindrop in his ear.

The Indian government has managed to turn the concept of nonviolence on its head. Nonviolent resistance and nonviolent governance. Unlike, say, China or Turkey or Indonesia, India doesn't mow down its people. It doesn't kill people who are refusing to move. It just waits it out. It continues to do what it has to do and ignores the consequences.

People rarely win wars, governments rarely lose them. People get killed. Governments moult and regroup, hydra-headed. They use flags first to shrink-wrap people's minds and smother thought, and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury their willing dead.

When was the last time the United States won a war? You know, it lost in Vietnam. It's lost in Afghanistan. It's lost in Iraq. And it will not be able to contain the situation. It is hemorrhaging. It is now - you know, of course you can continue with drone attacks, and you can continue these targeted killings, but on the ground, a situation is being created which no army - not America, not anybody - can control. And it's just, you know, a combination of such foolishness, such a lack of understanding of culture in the world.

He walked on water. Perhaps. But could he have *swum* on land? In matching knickers and dark glasses? With his Fountain in a Love-in-Tokyo? In pointy shoes and a puff? Would he have had the imagination?

Because of who I am and what place I have now in India, I'm petitioned all the time to get involved. It's exhausting and very difficult to have to say, 'Look, I'm only one person. I can't do everything.' I know that I don't want to be worn to the bone where I lose my sense of humor.

It's OK just to be a writer, who writes about the society in which he lives and the issues that most important. Now how can that not be a writer, it always was. It's just recently that writers have been reduced to these playthings of the market.