Penguin Books had already published two of my works including a collection of short stories, Farewell to a Ghost, and were familiar with my range. In fact, David Davidar had already read some of my stories while in the Penguin headquarters in London, be-fore Penguin Books, India was launched. Hence, there was no problem in a mutually agreed choice of items for the Selected Fiction. My editors were conscientious and sensitive. Had there been no constraint in deciding the volume of the work, they would have been happy to include a few more stories. There were no other criteria except for one—the merit of each item—26 short stories, one novelette (‘The Dusky Horizon') and one complete novel ('A Tiger at Twilight') as a work of fiction.

Thanks for tracing that common element running through most of the stories. No, that was not a consciously chosen criterion. But that could have contributed to the process of selection because of the atmospheric harmony the element establishes among the stories.

Depends on what we understand by theme. If it is the central idea underlying all the plots, then there is no common theme. There is a world of difference between a story like, say, ‘The Mystery of the Missing Cap' and ‘The Bridge in the Moonlit Night'. The first shows the turbulence created by the sudden introduction of a vote-oriented democracy in the minds of the nice little gentlemen of rural India and their inability to cope up with its bizarre demands. The second one is a subtle exposition of the psychological and psychic imprints received in one's youth, which do not vanish despite the vicissitudes of time that suddenly surface at one's ripe old age. The desperate and irresistible urge of the main character to recover what he has lost in his youth verges almost on the supernatural, without, of course, making it explicit.
But if we delve deeper into the concept of theme, we appreciate the helplessness in which the characters in both these stories are reduced by the very force of circumstances and psychological conditions beyond their control. The novelette 'Dusky Horizon' is a document of this helplessness. But then there are stories, which can be grouped under other themes. Finally, the novel, 'A Tiger at Twilight' is a recreation of a world which has almost disappeared - the world of sylvan domains ruled by princes and tigers - their whims and idiosyncrasies and their significances, psychological and otherwise. In several of the stories the theme could be a faith in the destiny of man.

While creating a character - I should rather hasten to amend and say recreating a character - I become identified .with it even if it is a villain. Hence their hearts throb in mine. Each one has played his or her role and I have no special preference for any of them - not at this moment in any case.

Which past? I am a believer in the lives past. That is to say, I have been born again and again. The degree of maturity of one's perception depends on experiences gained in one's earlier incarnations too.

It is not as if I had any specific intention to impart any sense of duty to my readers. The term sahitya implies the force of sympathy. When I have portrayed the helplessness or frailty of a character in a way (that is art) that would make others feel the character's predicament, empathise with him or her, my inspiration for exposing a certain aspect of life has been justified. As you rightly suggest, that may lead a reader to introspection or to experience catharsis.

Every individual has a metaphysical quest, be he or she conscious of It or not. Like many others I too groped for light for years until I came to Sri Aurobindo, where I learnt of his astoundingly new vision of the future of man which no religion, creed or philosophy had told earlier, to the best of my knowledge. Our being is still dominated by the dictates of our body, life and mind. But the innermost element of our being, the soul, is bound to emerge and take the leadership of our existence. The spirit's role is to be established not at the cost of the so-called mundane or worldly life, but through an integral transformation of the entire life. This knowledge has quenched my thirst; what remains is to prepare oneself for that glorious metamorphosis or to be deserving of it. Probably it would lead to fruition in a future birth!

It may not be necessarily evil always. But it surely is unfortunate. Much depends on the degree of self-promotion as well as the motive. At a certain stage of one's career a writer may be required, in absence of a promoter or a chance connoisseur, to tell the publisher about his own achievements. That is a reasonable exercise. But when one must brag about oneself, that sounds bizarre. Even that may be pardonable. It is when one promotes oneself or tries to do so in any field to the detriment of someone truly deserving, in any field, and when one does that consciously, then the exercise becomes evil indeed.

So far as I remember, when in answering a question I spoke critically of some of the values popularised today, through the electronic media in particular, in the name of knowledge and culture, but really to serve nothing but the cause of naked consumerism, the interviewer observed that I sounded pessimistic. To that my rejoinder was that to be critical of one's own time was no pessimism. Yes, if we could really get over our false fascinations, if we could stop running after false gods—there would be a better possibility for the emergence of right values, of intelligent cultivation of knowledge and culture. I am optimistic about man's capacity to bring about such a change in his outlook.

My feeling is a mixture of emotions and thoughts. I feel grateful; at the same time I wonder if there is any reason for me to be happy. So many factors have contributed to the making of the writer in me. Then, the elan created by a combination of all these factors has been ignited by that mysterious urge - creative inspiration. What if some of those factors were missing? What if, despite their presence, the inspiration was missing? What if an appreciative readership was not there? I wonder and there I remain!

All such concepts had contributed to the moulding of literature in certain ways and they will continue to do so. But the literature proper has its own individuality. Once the Greeks read or heard Homer with a feeling of pride, their national spirit vibrated in those epics, but the world beyond Greece reads Homer because it is great literature. There was always ‘globality’, if I can use such an expression, of human consciousness and that was reflected in the timelessness and universal appeal of good literature emanating from any national ethos. The economic, social and political globalisation would not affect the stream of creativity in any formidable manner, except in forms and evanescent experiments. The literature's appeal is to the individual, even though the individual is a part of the masses.

I am not sure. Adventures in human ideas and creative inspirations have always been ahead of the social structural changes and progress.

Great and good writing influences the mind of the society, but only in the course of time. What immediately influences (it is a superficial influence though) is bad writing. We have that stuff in abundance. There are false gods in every sphere of our society. They cannot be demolished except by the tides of time, for they are in tune with the hedonistic wave created by unchecked licence we have granted to consumerism. The kind of writer's ideal for any age—not only our age—is the writer who can remain faithful to his own inspiration, faithful to the art and the 'word'.

I am giving a final touch to My Little India which contains my reminiscences of places and people of the country, with encounters and anecdotes, first serialised in The States-man. As you know, I am a bilingual author, writing in my mother tongue Oriya and in English. I am also translating my Oriya novel, Amruta Phala, which brought me the Saraswati Samman, into English.