 My temperament is such that when things seem easy, I distrust it, you know With every book I push myself. I push myself very hard, you know When I finished Sea of Poppies, I thought it was impossibly difficult. It just seemed very very challenging and I really had to Push myself hard But then river of smoke was even more so even more challenging and you know And they took an enormous effort, you know, I had to literally give it my all. I would be a little embarrassed to sort of easily accept that you know the real turning point of What's happening is just just because of the God of small things I think there's a whole lot of things that that are happening at this time And I mean surely the God of small things is a part of it, you know But how did I come to write it? Just in the way Writers do, you know, just I just decided that It was something that that I had, you know, had wanted to do I think more subconsciously than consciously for a long time The Indian novel has changed in the Indian novel in English has changed from Rushdie's time from the time of Midnight's Children until today's Today's time and I think Midnight's Children and Rushdie He immediately had a different attitude. I certainly do believe that certainly do believe that Salman Rushdie's talent and Midnight's Children's startling difference from what had gone before Began to Make in the literature what it is in the world today Rushdie did was to bring back into English fiction that kind of Picker-esque robustuous Scale which we had seen in the 18th century, but which are gradually petered out post Dickens So I do think he's quite historically important writer Whether Those who've come after him Will recognize be recognized in time as having the same historical importance I frankly rather doubt I've only written three novels in a collection of short stories the bulk of my books are in fact non-fiction But my three novels I suppose Place me more in the camp of the literary novelist than of the maths market novelist I'm proud that my first novel the great Indian novel is today in 2010 and it's 33rd edition. There's been a vacuum here. I think in Prishti's chair for the past 20 years And actually into that space has poured The Indian novel first with Salman hugely important book, but I think perhaps fun enough The second wave of that was started by Rundity Roy her novel God of small things And of course what was important about a run to them and lots of things important about a run to his book But one of course she lived in Delhi and Salman by that time was living here Possibly to me the division is pre-God of small things and post-God of small things in terms of the way the world perceived Indian fiction Rundity Roy and God of small things said it is done It has been done by somebody living in India writing out of India with no great sort of pedigree of Connections across the globe things that fiction can do is to bring you it can take it can bring you the news But it can also take you into a world that you know nothing about and one of the great things fiction can do is that and India of course is an extraordinarily large various country With an enormous number of you know different aspects to it all of which to some degree are fascinating and interesting And so for British readers and I guess the same is true for Spanish readers Italian readers American readers. There is something sort of wonderful about about Visiting in fiction a place that you may never actually visit in I call myself an accidental writer when I was writing it I knew that I was on to a good thing in the sense I knew that the plot was fresh and the narrative structure was unique Because I was trying to reveal the private life of my protagonist through the public spectacle of a question But still I thought what I had written was a very Indian novel Which did not try to exoticize India and I thought this would be something which only Indian readers would be able to relate to So it has come as a pleasant surprise to me that readers in so many different countries Have been able to relate to my novel incredible and imposing tradition of Narrative and storytelling which has been going on for you know close to 5,000 years in India and which is Slowly coming into coming into the West. There's a microcosm of the world The world is changing so fast and India within itself contains several of the last centuries and It is also a window into the future worlds readers are today looking at India as a literary powerhouse and this is only when we are talking of Indian writing in English The the Indian writing in other language is still relatively unexplored And I wonder what will happen when all that comes out into English through translation and and you have a really big explosion What's happened is that I think we have found our confidence in our language and and what's happening is this kind of explosion with literature and I Feel in a way that we have taken that a language of English and made it our own now There's an interest in Indian culture. Yes, there is There is and more people are writing about it So but there is a great interest in things Indian, you know, it's and this is just an aspect of it Well, you know curiously culture I believe culture always writes on the tailcoat of economic effluorescence So a lot of this acceptance of Indian culture and and by extension Indian writing has to do with the fact that we are Becoming economically a very very significant power in the world today the Indian voice and not Only necessarily in English, but people are equally interested I think and translations that are coming out of all kinds of languages across the length and breadth of India It's a combination of of the traditional strengths of Indian writers and The increasing awareness of foreigners of India the writing is sort of going back to India By which I mean that the writers are writing India and they're not necessarily writing for an audience as Indians we have so many stories to tell We have families with a whole lot of turmoil going on inside them. We also have So many states with their own peculiarities and their own little nuances and details Which are today appealing so much to the western audience writing in a more Indian way Now of course the fact that we write in a more Indian way less self-consciously, let's say has an effect also on the diaspora