I want to make sense of things, to understand the world, but my work is never really instructional. I have no wisdom to impart or give, so I think my dream readers would be people who just use the book as an excuse to get into their own cycle of thoughts. The book is just like a map. It's just a jotting-down of things that you can interpret in your own ways.

I'm not interested in, and not capable of, direct politics. What I can do - I try to figure out the underlying principles. I'm interested in the psychological forces that divide Indian people as a nation.

As a non-western artist, you have to ask yourself a question fairly early in your life: do I want to become a bridge maker, do I want my culture to be understood by the west? I have no intentions of doing such things. I'm fine being a little strange to a non-western audience. It doesn't bother me if my book doesn't change a generation of American readers.

Everything you draw is influenced. It's like yogurt. You need a little bit to start the next batch.

The most important part of a city is its people. In fact, people for me are like little cities. When you meet someone, it's like you've found a new city to explore. You take a tram, visit the museums and operas and cafes.

India has sanctioned phenomenal injustices for years and years and years. And normalized it. There is no understanding of what it means to be born into a class that has been denied basic human dignity for generations and generations.

I'm interested in history because it's a discipline that requires a lot of effort from the imagination. You need to put in a lot of imaginative effort to figure out how people lived in an era that is not yours. And in that understanding of people from a different era, I feel, is an important gateway into humanity. Because you understand human behavior. In order to understand humanity, history is important.