Do you follow political and other developments in India, or is your interest in these matters restricted only to the period during which you are working on a novel?
I do follow them. The nice thing now is, in terms of technology, I can wake up and read the morning papers, which makes it much more immediate. I try and follow developments not out of a sense of duty, but because there's always something crazy and dramatic going on (laughs). I hope this doesn't sound patronising, but politics in India is colourful in a way that is unlike anywhere else. It can be astonishing and entertaining.
What are the concerns you grapple with -- themes you intend to address, if not now then in future?
As you were saying, the commonalities of certain things are fairly obvious. One of the things is the desire to be loved. It is strong and universal, and exists in all my books. The propensity towards ruthlessness in humans, and its consequences, is also something I can see resonating throughout.
I also have this overriding concern with form -- with the manner in which stories are told, how that has shaped us and how we shape them. In the last semester, for instance, I taught a course on the modern short story. We talked about the construction of stories and why certain ones affect us so strongly -- fiction as a kind of specialised rhetoric.
Even the way you tell a story today changes, because it can be featured on a Web page or uploaded as a Podcast. Would these things affect the way you decide to write?
Not necessarily. What I'm interested in is not just different media, but traditions of narrative -- the thriller, the love story, science fiction, and how it all occurs. If, for instance, you compare a love story by (Anton) Chekov with one by (Saadat Hasan) Manto, it's interesting to see how they are different and similar in terms of construction, what the techniques are for the writers using them. I think form is hugely important, in that what artists are finally after is some version of beauty; some sort of formal elegance that becomes part of the purpose of the work.
Do you then consciously strip a story to its bare bones while reading it? Doesn't that take away from the pure pleasure of reading?
The first time I read or watch something, it gets past me if it's really good. But, if it's clumsy, you start noticing things, you maintain distance and start analysing it. I think it is Sam Goldman who said that he judged films by the seat of his pants. If he felt his bum while watching a movie, and was conscious of that, he knew it was a bad film (laughs).
Read an exclusive extract from Sacred Games: Tales from the Underworld
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