When I was growing up in the south Indian city of Madras, there were only two political parties that mattered; one was run by a former matinee idol, and the other was run by his former screenwriter.

When I was writing 'The White Tiger' I lived in a building pretty much exactly like the one I described in this novel, and the people in the book are the people I lived with back then. So I didn't have to do much research to find them.

An honest politician has no goodies to toss around. This limits his effectiveness profoundly, because political power in India is dispersed throughout a multi-tiered federal structure; a local official who has not been paid off can sometimes stop a billion-dollar project.

Indians mock their corrupt politicians relentlessly, but they regard their honest politicians with silent suspicion. The first thing they do when they hear of a supposedly 'clean' politician is to grin. It is a cliche that honest politicians in India tend to have dishonest sons, who collect money from people seeking an audience with Dad.

There's a time when it was an event for a black person to be on television. Where black households would gather around, 'Oh, you know, Sammy Davis is going to be on 'All in the Family' tonight! Let's go check it out!' It was a big, big thing.

I was lucky because my mother worked extremely hard, and our family always had food to eat.

I was always on the go, and thought I was too busy to develop something like this. I thought at the time that diabetes went along with bad habits, but I was the last one in my family to eat junk food.

Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.