All fiction relies on the real world in the sense that we all take in the world through our five senses and we accumulate details, consciously or subconsciously. This accumulation of detail can be drawn on when you write fiction.

World can be a bewildering place,and dreams and ambitions are often paths to the most pernicious of traps

Flirting with madness was one thing; when madness started flirting back, it was time to call the whole thing off.

Traffic in the streets of Bombay is chaotic at best. Riding a bicycle is a dangerous occupation. However, there are hundreds of them on the streets competing with the cars and buses and lorries because it is the poor man's mode of transport.

...there was another, gorier parturition, when two nations incarnated out of one. A foreigner drew a magic line on a map and called it the new border; it became a river of blood upon the earth. And the orchards, fields, factories, businesses, all on the wrong side of that line, vanished with a wave of the pale conjuror's wand.

There didn't seem to her any harm in it, and the make-believe was so comforting.

Loss is essential. Loss is part and parcel of that necessary calamity called life.