We're living in a time when the world has suddenly discovered India because it's run out of raw material for its imagination. The raw materials for imagination are inexhaustible here.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
We've gone from the image of India as land of fakirs lying on beds of nails, and snake charmers with the Indian rope trick, to the image of India as a land of mathematical geniuses, computer wizards, software gurus.
Part of me wonders what it would have been like to have had my first experience of India in a normal way, rather than through the eyes of a film.
Indian culture certainly gives the Indian mind, including the mind of the Indian scientist, the ability to think out of the box.
People think that because I write about India I must be trying to portray India in a way.
Much of the conventional analysis of India's stature in the world relies on the all-too-familiar economic assumptions. But we are famously a land of paradoxes, and one of those paradoxes is that so many speak about India as a great power of the 21st century when we are not yet able to feed, educate and employ all our people.
If India hadn't become a troubled space for me, somehow I wouldn't have any reason to write about it. So the fact that it's a lost love, or something, is why I keep thinking about it obsessively.
I am always fascinated by India.
If we dispense with some of our self-made boundaries, India can really take its place in the world as an economic power. It hasn't happened because we, sadly, don't look at ourselves as Indians but as Punjabis or Parsis, unlike the Americans. Don't make such boundaries.
India's a fascinating country. It's constantly changing, but there's still a lot of superstition and backwards thinking.
We take ourselves so seriously moment by moment, but India shows you a sense of eternity. You're one little ant on a hill. You're part of life, but you're not the whole thing.