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.

There are different reasons why people write: for themselves, or for other writers, or to get prizes, or keeping an audience in mind. In my case, it felt really nice that a certain type of readership read the book and liked it, even though my readership is not as wide as certain popular books.

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.

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.

Only a very specific kind of writer keeps their reader in mind while working. Such writers don't want to irk their readers; they don't want to challenge their readers; they want to produce exactly what their reader expects them to produce. I'm not like that.

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.

I think it's really good not to get published. It sounds crazy but it's true. People want to get published very soon, but the moment that happens, you lose a bit of your originality. Once you publish, you are always doing things made-to-order. You stop being a weaver and become a tailor. You are tailoring things to suit other people's fashion.