Just because someone has gone to an elite school and college does not make him smarter than the person who has grown up on street knowledge.

Sometimes street knowledge can be as important as book knowledge.

My first novel was a challenge to myself. No one had an inkling that I was working on it.

For me, the day job comes first. That's why I call myself a diplomat who writes, not a writer who masquerades as a diplomat. If the day job demands it, I won't write at all. I write in what I call 'the crevices of my day job', and that comes only on weekends.

The one conclusion I have reached is that whiskey is a great leveler. You might be a hotshot advertising executive or a lowly foundry worker, but if you cannot hold your drink, you are just a drunkard.

I am neither a Bengali nor am I from Delhi's St Stephen's. I am an Allahabad boy.

...a rainy day ceases to have meaning for a person who has lived in the open under a monsoon cloud most of his life.