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Delhi means everything to me. This city has given me everything, and I love it.

Mumbai may not be my city. But it is my kind of city.

I've never yet managed to write a novel which didn't have an Indian central character.

When I lived in Delhi, it was burdened with so many futures - fast roads, malls, flyovers - that one felt almost obliged to be hopeful. Now that hope has diminished, you can feel the city going into a frenzy to reinvent itself. I miss living there.

I do think of Bombay as my hometown. Those are the streets I walked when I was learning to walk. And it's the place that my imagination has returned to more than anywhere else.

India lends itself well to fictionalization, but ultimately, it all depends on the writer's imagination.

Delhi is my emotional home. I still dream of owning a home there.

I left Delhi in 1989 and remember very little of how life used to be then. Increasingly, in my recent visits to Delhi, I've started to realize that the city has become intellectually very lively. It makes me want to discover the city over and over again.

Cities are about juxtaposition.

Many characters in the novel are representative of types that exist in India. He represents the caste system in India with an air of superiority, the caste system in India and the people thinking that western things are better.