No family would want to be seeing their son dying. My father said, write about it, talk about it. Do whatever you can by other means. There are other ways of intervention. There is a political way for this, I was told.

That part in the book is representative of what happened in thousands of families. Parents made them sit down and talked them out of it. There was a lot of emotional melodrama.

Part I of the interview: 'I am a Kashmiri and my politics are different'

The stories of the people you talk about are very snappy and crisp. Did you not want to draw the characters out a bit more?

That a personal choice. In one story, a woman who was raped on her wedding day is sitting with her school-going daughter who says she wants to become a doctor.

I don't need to say anything else. She had defeated everyone and has succeeded. It was a deliberate decision to leave the readers with an image.

People have reacted in different ways to a book. The reactions in Delhi are different from those in London and New York. In Kashmir, though, everyone said: It is my story.

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Image: Kashmiri women mourn the death of four alleged militants killed in a gunbattle with Indian troops in Saidpora, Shopian, about 70 km south of Srinagar in February 2008. Photograph: Tauseef Mustafa/AFP/Getty Images

Also read: 'The Army can kill terrorists, it cannot kill terrorism'

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