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.

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

...the face has limited space. My mother used to say, if you fill your face with laughing, there will be no more room for crying.

Children don't make judgments about which details are important... a child captures them all.

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 no such thing as perfect privacy, life was a perpetual concert-hall recital with a captive audience.

Walk, first, through the fire, then philosophize.