I could feel my colour. I could feel racism...in the way people looked at you, and the way they talked to you. Now, though, because of the mixing of … - Jeet Thayil

Because that's where I live, and have lived for a few years now. I wouldn't say in food tastes, for instance, that I'm Indian. I would say I'm Chinese, food-wise. That's the food that I like to eat on a daily basis." It's common for people to be a mix of cultures, rather than having one specific identity.

We didn’t know that right before us Hari Kunzru and Amitava Kumar had just read from The Satanic Verses in a separate session. The minute I finished, people were queuing for me to sign copies of Narcopolis. But we were taken to this room where Hari and Amitava were sitting and we weren’t allowed to leave. There was a lawyer, there were police on site and they threatened to close down the festival which made all of us feel like shit. I was full of remorse, because the directors are our friends and we knew how much work they had put into it, but I don’t think we were really in trouble. Even though we were told to make ourselves scarce.

A friend from Hong Kong had turned up in Bombay and took me to an opium den in Crawford Market. I walked in and saw this room with three pipes. Everything happened at floor level. It was like a bubble: Bombay noise and heat out there, 19th-century people lying and smoking in here, absolutely self-contained. I couldn’t look at that and not think of it as a piece of literary installation art. I walked in the door and I was hooked. I smoked that day, and loved it and went back. A month or so later I got an aerogramme from my friend saying, “Jeet, get your ass out of that den.”