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And I never thought this day would come, but here I am, sitting in front of the ritual fire, repeating Sanskrit mantras I don’t understand. He’s looking at me now, and I can feel it on my skin. We are getting married. Damini is locked away somewhere in a room, Lakshmi’s at Lord Krishna’s feet in the heavens, and I’m going to be his wife...
Interview by Fionulla McHugh
He spent two years in the early 1980s living in Egypt, a period he describes in his non-fiction book, In an Antique Land. While there, he read Gabriel García Márquez and Boswell’s Life of Johnson; he would say later that his time in Egypt, ‘was absolutely the fundamentals of my education as a writer’.
He can remember the minute his life changed with news of his first novel’s acceptance.
‘What happened?’
‘A telegram!’ he says, and suddenly giggles with pleasure into his napkin. ‘I’ll never forget that day; I had clouds under my feet.
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