India, Nov. 14 -- You loved reading John Berger and also wrote a book on him, Ways of Telling. What was it like to meet him?

At that stage, I'd met very few writers. I loved literature, and I wanted to be a writer myself, and they were sort of mythic figures, so naturally, I wanted to meet them. I just feel so lucky that Berger was the first. He was my favourite writer, too, and he happened to be the first great writer I met. His behaviour was so exemplary that I feel that it set a standard for my own behaviour. In a way, something about his writing made me particularly interested in him because of the values that he espoused in his books. It'd have been particularly disappointing if he had been less than wonderful. At any festival you g...