From someone who confesses that she was not even sure her debut novel would get published to a Booker prize-winning author catapulted into the fame bracket, Roy has come a long way. Although she feels that the Booker only partially helped sales, Roy does concede that it added to the book's popularity and that there is an undeniable commercial aspect to writing now. ``On the one hand, when I travelled to so many countries, I told myself that I was going to have a ball. When I got tired of it, I just stopped. I cannot complain for a second that my book is being read in Chinese, Korean and Estonian. It means having someone in Estonia saying to me ``this was my childhood'', to have a panel of New York editors drawling at me,"We all have aunts like Baby Kochamma.'' That human connection is fantastic to make.'' A connection that was nurtured by a childhood spent in a small village by the river in Kerala where Roy ``was being educated by people and books and things'' which was to shape her writing.

``The greatest influence on me as a writer is that I used to go fishing in the river at the age of three. One had many thoughts at that age and learnt the value of silence,'' she says. An unsupervised childhood where she was allowed to ``commune with the river'' saw her absorbing all that she could read. "I knew Kipling before I could read and didn't go to a school till I was 10 years old. My mother had this Australian missionary friend who used to tell me `I can see Satan in your eyes.' So the first coherent sentence I ever wrote as a child which is now in my book was ``I hate Miss Mitten and I think that her knickers are torn,'' she laughs.

Driven by a desire to be independent of her family, even her stint at an architecture course, she says helped her write The God of Small Things. ``I knew I would never build a building, but I am interested in the politics of design.''

Roy sees the success of her novel as a welcome event for Indian writing in English. ``All the publishers are hunting in these grounds because the book has become an incredible commercial success and they hope to recreate it. While they're hunting they are opening opportunities. Your cannot force a crop to grow but perhaps in time they will discover someone, somebody...,''she feels.

Roy reacts to her post-Booker celebrity status with equanimity. ``I'm working hard at not being a celebrity. I do believe that it will die out in time. You cannot go around feeling all that important. Fame is democratic too, it comes and goes.'' And the question everybody seems to be asking -- Is there another novel in the offing? She's not telling yet. ``There are no pressures to write another book. I've got the T-shirt. I'm free. I don't need to negotiate with the world.''