The New York-based Siddhartha Deb has penned two novels, The Point Of Return and Surface

'Lop-sided growth is beginning to threaten even the middle class'

The New York-based Siddhartha Deb has penned two novels, The Point Of Return and Surface, both set in north-east India. In an interview with G Sampath, Deb talks about his new book, The Beautful And The Damned, about India, and the ongoing Anna Hazare-led anti-corruption movement. Excerpts: What was the transition like, from fiction to nonfiction? The transition to nonfiction was difficult for practical reasons. I had to fund long stretches of reporting, and that was difficult at the beginning. I also had to spend a lot of time away from my very young son, and I didn't enjoy that at all. But writing nonfiction is easier in the sense that the boundaries are more clearly defined, and so it's harder to go wrong. With fiction, there are no clear boundaries, which means there are many more ways to go wrong but also a shot at transcendence, at magic, at creating life out of even nonsense, all of which I rather like. How did working on this book affect you as a person? It made me far older, but writing books does that to you, as does living. It surprised me in the reporting, which often began with worry, but then turned into interacting with interesting people in places that filled me with pleasure in unexpected ways. It also began as a project mired somewhat in doubt. Few publishers were interested in it, the initial advances were low or non-existent, and I had to struggle to support the reporting while also dealing with a new teaching job. But towards the very end of the project, fellowships and grants began flowing in almost of themselves, and the book has so far brought me a degree of success that sometimes feels unnerving. Any writers of narrative nonfiction who have inspired you? George Orwell has always been important to me, especially The Road To Wigan Pier and Down And Out In Paris And London. Also Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel And Dimed and Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah. What are you reading at present? M John Harrison's Light, James Scott's, The Art Of Not Being Governed, Yukio Mishima's The Decay Of The Angel, Mirza Waheed's The Collaborator. What do you think the Anna Hazare-led Lokpal bill movement says about 'New India'? It shows how the lopsided growth of the past decade is beginning to threaten even the middle class that bought into the idea of the New India most whole-heartedly. But the movement, even when honest in its anger at corruption, is a largely elite phenomenon, with nothing to say about the nexus between state and corporate interests, or indeed of the far more brutal forms of suffering that afflicts the majority in the country as opposed to the petty forms of corruption that we in the middle class suffer from but also collude in. I think this movement will peter out eventually, as Baba Ramdev's protests did, but other such movements will manifest themselves, including even millenarian ones. Are you hopeful about India's future (the next 5-10 years) or pessimistic? I hate trying to predict the future, or at least outside of fiction, but I am pessimistic about how things will be in the short term. In the long run, we're all dead. If you happen to run into Arindam Chaudhuri at the men's loo in Harvard, and he gives you that grin of his and says hi, what would you say to him? What would I be doing at Harvard? Although I was there briefly on a fellowship, it's not my usual hangout. I can, however, quite easily imagine a future where Chaudhuri is addressing the Harvard Business School. Were we to meet, I don't think a conversation would be difficult, at least for me. I don't like his tendencies towards censorship, but I don't dislike him or find him uninteresting. The big question is: would he grin?