India, Sept. 19 -- 1Your book reverses the colonial gaze. What drove your decision to make the coloniser appear so alien? I just wanted to introduce an alien. When the colonisers arrived, they were aliens. And, of course, once an alien arrives, all kinds of things are set loose. There is insecurity, there is order also. There is anxiety about the loss of culture, faith, identity and so on. Some people, of course, resist. Some people accept. And there are people who are, let's say, elite intellectually, who actually question what will happen to who we are. And that is the question that Amir Hassan asks. His master, the Sufi, says the world just got bigger and you find out that there is more to the world than you thought. You have to accept that. It was always there. It won't go away. 2The Avians in the book exploit existing caste divisions, much as colonial powers historically exploited local hierarchies. Was that parallel deliberate? They used it, which is what the British did, for example, in Kenya. They would set certain tribes against each other. I think they did that here too. People at the lower end of society start to come up and exert pressure, which the former elite, who remain the elite, resent. In this book, the upper castes don't have people to work for them because those who once did have now become policemen and so on. 3Why did you centre Amir Hassan, a historian and poet, in a novel so concerned with who controls its narrative? I pictured Amir Hassan writing it at a time when Delhi was in turmoil. There were a lot of intrigue and a lot of murders. The Sultan was ailing, probably being poisoned, and he thought he would imagine another, better world. An ordinary person couldn't do it; it would have to be a writer or a poet or a historian, which is what he is. Everything is then seen through his eyes. He is inspired by the figure of Amir Khusro. 4The novel is fascinated by how knowledge is written, preserved and manipulated. Why is the written word so important to Amir Hassan? He is a historian, he is a poet, and he is hyper-aware of the fact that knowledge can be manipulated. He writes a true history according to his observations, whereas the Avians are trying to change it. His form of resistance is to keep writing. Writing is a form of resistance, so that is what he has to do. He writes and makes sure that a good copy survives. That is the kind of resistance that remains possible when you cannot overturn certain forms of rule. 5Does your book suggest that mythology and empire function together, by turning a narrative into unquestionable truth? There is no absolute truth, unless in mystical terms. But I think a novel like this stands in some way against the society we live in. Nowadays, who reads? But for a novelist, you know, this is what you can do. In my previous novels, the subject is more explicit. Here, it is presented in terms of speculative fiction or even fantasy....