145;India needs engaged, self-aware writing146;

This pressure to be modern originally came from the West, through direct and indirect colonialism and in the case of Afghanistan, through Soviet Communism, and in Tibet, through Chinese Communism. My focus is on individuals but there is a lot of narrative history in these pieces because that is something I find usually absent in Western reports about these societies. I was keen to stress that the Taliban in Afghanistan or the Maoists in Nepal are not isolated or anachronistic phenomena but very much products of the West-created modern world order. In India, too, the obligation to be a strong nation-state has inflicted great suffering on the Kashmiris.

8226; You have written extensively on India and much of South and Central Asia. Do you see these parts of the world through the same prism that you did in your earlier books?

No, there are changes all the time, shifts and refinements of perspectives. In Butter Chicken I really was recording a straightforward experience. When I wrote the other books I was older, had travelled a bit, and read a lot more. Those books came out of an experience of greater complexity and depth.

8226; One of your Indian critics described you as 8216;8216;a foreign publisher8217;s delight and an Indian reviewer8217;s puzzle8217;8217;. Do you consciously write with a particular kind of reader in mind?

I think we should retire these very old, pseudo-nationalist questions about 8216;foreign audiences8217;. You will find that most reviewers who complain about Indian writers writing for foreign audiences are working very hard at the same time to interest foreign publishers in their manuscripts, while their newspapers lavishly cover the antics of B-grade American celebrities.

Globalisation creates other, more interesting conundrums for writers, and we ought to spend our intellectual energy examining those. When I write a long piece, I hope that it will have a well-read, politically liberal and intellectual curious reader. This reader can exist anywhere in the world, in America and India as well as Zambia.

As it happens, I publish in American and British magazines that can afford to pay for extensive research-trips and publish long articles. Why don8217;t I write more often for Indian magazines? Because no one has space for the kind of detailed reportage I like doing. It is as simple as that.

8226; Travel writing is a vibrant genre in contemporary Indian publishing, unlike the time you published Butter Chicken. Who are some of the authors you relate to or find compelling?

I am glad that travel writing is flourishing in India, though I hope it is the kind of engaged and self-aware narrative writing that we need in India. Because, personally, the genre, as it has been practiced recently in the West, doesn8217;t excite me any more.

I think the travel writers I like8212;D H Lawrence, Levi-Strauss, Naipaul8212;were on a larger existential and intellectual quest to understand themselves and the world. The kind of travel writing where someone goes out to adventure in the unknown on behalf of an armchair reader, sprinkles his narrative with a few historical facts, and briskly expresses a few national and class prejudices along the way8212;that sort of thing doesn8217;t interest me.

I do hope Indian writers will write more travel books about not just India, but also about other parts of Asia8212;particularly Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, countries with which we have had long cultural links. These places seem strangely absent from our consciousness. But this is part of our unhealthy obsession with the West.

8226; Your critique of the rise of Hindu nationalism in India in the 8217;90s appeared in many publications in the West. Now, with the BJP on a low ebb, do you feel India is on a more progressive path?

The question assumes that Hindu nationalism was the biggest threat to India and now that the BJP is out of power we8212;or, at least the English newspaper-reading middle classes8212;can get on with making India shine. But a kind of crude nationalism is still with us8212;all these hectic longings for a seat on the Security Council, recognition by America8212;and, in any case, the BJP8217;s biggest legacy is a culture of cruelty and callousness in the public sphere. The thousands of suicides by farmers in India8212;one of the most shameful events of independent India, which wasn8217;t caused directly by communalism8212;occurred on the BJP8217;s watch, while India was shining beautifully on Page 3. Not much has changed in this regard.

Writers and academics who have been visiting India for decades ask me, 8216;What has happened to Indian newspapers? They are worse than British tabloids!8217; On any given day, you can see this unpleasant mix of callousness and frivolity in the newspapers, apart from a few exceptions. So, no, I don8217;t think we are on a progressive path.

8226; You are also working on a novel.

All I can say is that it is very different from anything I have written.