Some books I buy for their title, others for brevity. I love short books - the way you know from the first page that it's going to end. - Amit Chaudhuri

'I think of Ramu. The Ramu I know and the Ramu I'm writing about have become indistinguishable. The same's true of the Bombay I'm recounting from experience and the Bombay I'm assembling through words. This is often how novels begin for me. There's a convergence. I live. Then something prompts me to write. The writing is not about life. It is a form of living. The two happen simultaneously.

‘a speck of dust hanging/in a vertical wall of light.’ ( Letter from the Hills )

... the floor was a stone slab of coolness, an expanse of warm ice that would not melt.