India, May 16 -- 1What inspired The Last of Earth? I've always been interested in Tibet. After I moved to the UK, I came across this account by an Englishman of his travels in Tibet in the 19th century, and how his life was helped by two Indians whom he describes as his manservants. But he's very racist in how he describes Indians and Tibetans. I also came across stories of Indian spies such as Nain Singh Rawat and Kinthup, who were trained by the British Survey of India to use their bodies as surveying instruments. They were taught to walk in a certain way so that each pace would be exactly 33.5 inches. So, if one counted 2,000 paces, that would be about a mile, and that was how they mapped all of Tibet. In the 19th century, because Westerners couldn't go into the country, the British would just send Indians to map the region. I was thinking about that, and the factors that motivated them. I found that a number of female explorers also went to Tibet. In the novel, Katherine wants to be the first European woman to reach Lhasa. 2What was it like conducting the research for this novel? The relevant archives are very carefully curated by the British. They had a definite sense of how they wanted to present the empire to the world, so mentions of atrocities have been erased or downplayed. Subaltern-studies historians have written quite a lot about that. For instance, people are described as savages, not as people who are protesting against an injustice. So, when one is referring to the archive, one has to look at what is represented as well as what might have actually happened. That was one of the main challenges: locating the Indian consciousness in these essentially English archives, trying to read between the lines, and trying to figure out what the erasures are and what might not have been stated. 3You travelled to Tibet only after completing the first draft. What alterations did you make after your visit? The surprising part for me was that the descriptions of the landscape in my novel were accurate, in that I relied so much on explorers' accounts, I didn't find the need to change any of that. One of the main changes was about the relationship Tibetans have with the landscape. They refer to the lakes and rivers and mountains as mothers and fathers, and I found that very moving. What we call the parikrama around Mount Kailash, the Tibetans call the Kora, and it's a three-day trek if you're walking, but many Tibetans prostrate themselves every step of the way. It's a very difficult journey. And they're not just praying for themselves but for the world. I found that really moving, and that informed how the landscape is represented in the novel....