Love’s Many Shades

How has the city contributed to your writing?

This city has not just ‘contributed to my writing’ — it has made me into the writer that I am today. Everything I have seen,experienced,lived and loved in this city left traces on me,long before I knew I would try and write a book about it. I moved here from Calcutta in 1995,I was not yet 25,I decided to move on an impulse. I was perhaps stimulated by the drug that is this city. It went to my head. Even my poetry book,Sight May Strike You Blind,had poems inspired by the city.

The story,The Lost Umbrellas of Udipi,gives away the fact that the city’s udipis are one of your comfort zones. What else about the city do you find comforting?

I find riding in taxis or buses oddly comforting. Perhaps because I’m rarely in a hurry and can relax,chat with the taxi driver,or,in a bus,observe my co-passengers,enjoy the view of the streets from an elevation. I also love Juhu,especially the Prithvi Theatre premises.

While reading the book,one gets the feeling that lots of autobiographical elements seeped into the stories. Is that correct?

Perhaps,perhaps not. To write through the prism of self is inescapable. Like any successful fiction,the book draws from reality,refracts it through the writing self,and in doing so,mutates it. So I shall leave this question in the realm of conjecture.