I am a businessman at the end of the day. I have grown up with Excel sheets. I start out writing my novel with spreadsheets and the milestones in each chapter highlighted.

Writing is incidental to my primary objective, which is spinning a good yarn. I view myself as a storyteller more than a writer. The story - and hence the extensive research that goes into each one of my books - is much more important than the words that I use to narrate it.

What I would not like is to be ignored. I write from the heart. I don't write for me. I write for my readers.

I am a part of the old school where I feel that purity of the language should be retained. But English is a constantly evolving language where new words are being added to the dictionary, so I don't see any harm in experimenting with the language. Only poor editing standards need to be improved.

A book and a movie are different animals. You need a cinematic perspective to be involved in the motion pictures. And this is something I lack.

Winning an award is a great feeling but winning the Vodafone Crossword Popular Choice Award is particularly exhilarating because it is based upon public voting. I find it a strange quirk of fate that Chanakya's Chant, a political tale, should end up winning an election!

If there is one city apart from Mumbai where I would love to settle down, it has to be Chennai.